
Glass Z.^A± 

Book_iLA^EL£^B 
Copyright jN^ 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



THE WORDS OF GARRISON 




ih'Jt^j. /, 



a/r-rLJ^(r7w- 



THE WORDS OF 
GARRISON 

A CENTENNIAL SELECTION (i 805-1 905) OF 
CHARACTERISTIC SENTIMENTS FROM THE 
WRITINGS OF WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON 

WITH A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 

LIST OF PORTRAITS, BIBLIOGRAPHY 

AND CHRONOLOGY 




BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 

(Cte 0iterjjitie press, Cambri&ge 

1905 



•or .. ;t^ 



LiSKARY of OONHRESS 

AUG 29 1905 
copr b. 



COPYRIGHT 1905 BY WENDELL PHILLIPS GARRISON 
AND FRANCIS JACKSON GARRISON 

Published October iqo^ 



Tour remarks were full of virtue and consolation^ 
perfect in explanation^ and furnished a rule to live by 
and to die by. 

We feel fully persuaded that the day cannot be far 
distant when you will be acknowledged — by the very 
lips of those who now denounce^ revile^ and persecute you 
as the vilest and basest of men^ the uproot er of all order ^ 
the destroyer of our countrf s peace^ prosperity y and hap- 
piness — to be its firm reliance^ its deliverer ^ the very 
pillar of its future grandeur. 

Testimonies of the People of Color 

He cried to every passing Hour to stay^ 

Lend him strong hands and break the Tyrant's rods: 
The heedless Hours went by^ but far away 

The slumbering Tears woke like avenging gods. 

Wendell Phillips Stafford 



In a small chamber^ friendless and unseen^ 

Toiled o^er his types one poor^ unlearned young man; 

The place was dark^ unfurnitured and mean^ 
Yet there the freedom of a race began. 

Help came but slowly; surely ,^ no man yet 
Put lever to the heavy world with less; 

What need of help? — He knew how types were sety 
He had a dauntless spirit and a press, 

James Russell Lowell 

Wherever wrong shall right deny^ 
Or suffering spirits urge their plea^ 

Be thine a voice to smite the lie^ 
A hand to set the captives free! 

John Greenleaf Whittier 



TO ALL WHO HATE CRUELTY 
OPPRESSION AND WAR 
AND BELIEVE IN THE EQUAL RIGHTS 
AND PERFECTIBILITY OF MANKIND 



PREFACE 

The following compilation is derived mainly 
from the four-volume Life of William Lloyd 
Garrison written by his children (The Cen- 
tury Co., New York, 1885, 1889), and now 
bearing the imprint of Houghton, Mifflin and 
Company. The bracketed numerical refer- 
ences are to this work, except in a few instances 
where the letter W indicates the volume of 
Garris.on^s "Writings" published in Boston 
in 1852, and the letter S the volume of "Son- 
nets and Other Poems *' published in Boston 
in 1843. 

The selection has not been designed to set 
forth the "beauties" of a writer who had little 
leisure or motive for rhetorical polish, and was 
always more concerned with contents than with 
style ; or of a speaker who, as he used to say, 
never aimed to " bring the house down, but 
to bring it up." Nor has it had wholly in view 



X PREFACE 

a truthful, because original and authoritative, 
expression of the character of a much maligned 
reformer. The " Words " have seemed to 
the compilers still vital with spiritual insight, 
strength, catholicity, consolation, and cheer, 
and worthy to wing their flight anew, albeit a 
quarter-century after 

the voice was stilled that taught 
Humility to tyrants^ upright brought 
The prostrate. 

W. p. G. 
F. J. G. 

June, igoS' 



CONTENTS 

THE WORDS OF GARRISON 

PAGE 

AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL I 

SLAVERY 17 

NON-RESISTANCE 26 

PERFECTIONISM 32 

POLITICS 39 

FREE TRADE 41 

SOCIALISM 43 

WOMAN'S RIGHTS 46 

DEATH 48 

MISCELLANEOUS 50 

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 57 
APPENDIX 

SELECT LIST OF PORTRAITS AND STATUARY I I 3 

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY I I 9 

CHRONOLOGY 1 26 

* * The frontispiece portrait is a photogravure from a photograph 
taken by George K. Warren in 1876. 



THE WORDS OF GARRISON 



AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL 

My country is the world ; my countrymen 
are all mankind, (i, 369.) 

* * * 

I thank God that I was born in the United 
States — that my field of labor lies in the 
United States, (ii, 407.) 

* * « 

I know that the cause of my enslaved coun- 
trymen cannot possibly be injured by my advo- 
cacy of the rights of all men, or by my opposi- 
tion to all tyranny, (iii, 173.) 

* * * 

Generally, where I stand up to speak, I am 
" native and to the manner born," but here 
[in England] I am a foreigner, standing on 
foreign soil ; and I ask myself, " What right 
have I to be here, an intermeddler, an agita- 
tor, if you will ? " . . . But I have in my 
own mind long come to this conclusion, that 
" the earth is the Lord's " ; and wherever on 



2 THE WORDS OF GARRISON 

His footstool I may be placed, if iniquity is 
to be arraigned and immorality is to be con- 
fronted, I claim my right before God to de- 
nounce it. (iv, 276.) 

* * * 

As to our moral obligation, it belongs to 
our nature, and is a part of our accountability, 
of which neither time nor distance, neither 
climate nor location, neither republican nor 
monarchical government, can divest us. Let 
there be but one slave on the face of the globe 
— let him stand on one extremity of the 
globe, and place me on the other — let every 
people, and tribe, and clime, and nation stand 
as barriers between him and myself: still, I 
am bound to sympathize with him — to pray, 
and toil, and plead for his deliverance — to 
make known his wrongs, and vindicate his 

rights, (i, 508.) 

* * * 

I have been derisively called a " Womaris 
Rights Man," I know no such distinction. I 
claim to be a Human Rights Man ; and 
wherever there is a human being, I see God- 
given rights inherent in that being, whatever 
may be the sex or complexion, (iii, 390.) 

* * * 



AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL 3 

I go for the people — the whole people — 
whatever be their bodily dimensions, temporal 
conditions, or shades of color, (i, 201.) 

* * * 

Is it republicanism to say that the majority 
can do no wrong ? Then I am not a repub- 
lican. Is it aristocracy to say that the people 
sometimes shamefully abuse their high trust ? 
Then I am an aristocrat, (i, 128.) 

* * * 

With reasonable men, I will reason ; with 
humane men, I will plead ; but to tyrants I 
will give no quarter, nor waste arguments where 
they will certainly be lost, (i, 188.) 

* * * 

What is the proposition to be discussed ? It 
is this : whether all men are created free and 
equal, and have an inalienable right to liberty I 
I am urged to argue this with a people who de- 
clare it to be a self-evident truth ! Why, such 
folly belongs to Bedlam. (W, 127.) 

* * * 

I never debate the question as to whether 
man may hold property in man. I never de- 
grade myself by debating the question, " Is 
slavery a sin ? " It is a self-evident truth, which 
God hath engraven on our very nature. Where 



4 THE WORDS OF GARRISON 

I see the holder of a slave, I charge the sin 
upon him, and I denounce him. (iii, 162.) 

« * * 
I am in earnest — I will not equivocate — I 
will not excuse — I will not retreat a single 

inch AND I WILL BE HEARD, (i, 225.) 

* « * 

I will he as harsh as truth, and as uncompro- 
mising as justice. (1,225.) 

* * * 

I shall M^^ great plainness of speech — believ- 
ing that truth can never conduce to mischiefs and 
is best discovered by plain words, (i, 200.) 

www 

My manner of expressing my thoughts and 
feelings is somewhat novel, and not always pal- 
atable, in this country [England] , on account 
of its plainness and directness ; but it will do 
more good, in the end, than a smoother mode. 
At least, I think so, and will " bide my time." 
I am led to be more plain-spoken because al- 
most every one here deals in circumlocution, 
and to offend nobody seems to be the aim of 
the speaker. If I chose y I could be as smooth 
and politic as any one ; but I do not so choose, 
and much prefer nature to art. (iii, 167.) 

* * * 



AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL 5 

I am accused of using hard language. I ad- 
mit the charge. I have not been able to find a 
soft word to describe villainy, or to identify the 
perpetrator of it. ( W, 121.) 

* * * 

It is my lot to be branded throughout this 
country as an agitator, a fanatic, an incendi- 
ary, and a madman. There is one epithet, I 
fervently desire to thank God, that has never 
been applied to me : I have never been stig- 
matized as a slaveholder^ or as an apologist of 

slavery, (i, 511.) 

* * * 

Are we enough to make a revolution ? No, 
but we are enough to begin one, and, once 
begun, it never can be turned back. I am for 
revolution, were I utterly alone. I am there 
because I must be there. I must cleave to the 
right. I cannot choose but obey the voice of 

God. (iii, 171.) 

* * * 

Phrenologically speaking, my caution is 
large, and my combativeness not very active ; 
and as I pay no regard whatever to the ques- 
tion of numbers, but everything to the question 
of right, I am not very forward in the work of 
proselytism. (iii, 171.) 



6 THE WORDS OF GARRISON 

With no pride of heart, however, but with 
much confidence of right action, with much 
virtuous accusation, and with real gratitude to 
God, I survey the past, and challenge man- 
kind to produce an instance in which the 
cause of moral reform, surrounded by equal 
difficulties and dangers, has advanced more rap- 
idly than the present. In seizing " the trump 
of God,'* I had indeed to blow "a jarring blast" 
— but it was necessary to wake up a nation 
then slumbering in the lap of moral deatho 
Thanks be to God, that blast was effectual : 
it pierced the ears of the deaf, it startled the 
lethargic from their criminal sleep, and it 
shook the land as a leaf is shaken by the 
wind. . . . Greater success than I have had, 
no man could reasonably desire, or humbly 
expect. Greater success no man could obtain, 
peradventure, without endangering his reliance 
upon an almighty arm. (i, 458, 459.) 

* * * 

Prisoner ! within these gloomy walls close pent — 
Guiltless of horrid crime or venial wrong — 

Bear nobly up against thy punishment, 

And in thy innocence be great and strong ! 



AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL 7 

Though beat — imprisoned — put to open shame — 
Time shall embalm and magnify thy name. 

(i, 182.) 

* * * 

FREEDOM OF THE MIND 

High walls and huge the body may confine, 

And iron grates obstruct the prisoner's gaze, 
And massive bolts may baffle his design. 

And vigilant keepers watch his devious ways : 
Yet scorns th' immortal mind this base control ! 

No chains can bind it, and no cell enclose : 
Swifter than light, it flies from pole to pole. 

And, in a flash, from earth to heaven it goes ! 
It leaps from mount to mount — from vale to vale 

It wanders, plucking honeyed fruits and flowers ; 
It visits home, to hear the fireside tale. 

Or in sweet converse pass the joyous hours : 
'T is up before the sun, roaming afar. 
And, in its watches, wearies every star ! 

Qy 1 79-) 

* * * 

Confine me as a prisoner — but bind me not as a 

slave. 
Punish me as a criminal — but hold me not as a 

chattel. 
Torture me as a man — but drive me not like a 

beast. 
Doubt my sanity, but acknowledge my immortality. 

(ii, 28.) 



8 THE WORDS OF GARRISON 

Ye angels, and the spirits of the just ! 

Crown'd as ye are, and thron'd in royal state ! 

In full seraphic strains congratulate 
Upon his waning years a child of dust. 
Who, as he fades, doth firmer find his trust 

In God — and holds the world at a mean rate. 

But upon heaven puts a high estimate ! 
This fills his soul with joy — that^ with disgust. 
The thirtieth round of my brief pilgrimage 

To-day is ended — 't is perchance the last 
I shall complete upon this earthly stage ; 

For toils increase, and perils thicken fast, 
And mighty is the warfare that I wage : — 

But 't is my foes, not I, that stand aghast ! 

0^ 72.) 

* * * 

If to the age of threescore years and ten, 

God of my life ! thou shalt my term prolong. 
Still be it mine to reprobate all wrong, 

And save from woe my suffering fellow-men. 

(ii, 433-) 
« * * 

Remember, when thou com'st to riper years, 
That unto God, from earliest infancy, 
Thy grateful father dedicated thee. 

And sought His guidance through the vale of tears. 

Fear God — then disregard all other fears. 

Bear witness. Heaven ! do I hate Slavery less, — 
Do I not hate it more, intensely more, — 



AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL 9 

Now this dear babe I to my bosom press ? 

My soul is stirred within me — ne'er before 
Have horrors filled it with such dire excess, 

Nor pangs so deep pierced to its inmost core. 

(ii, 100, 1 01.) 

* * * 

Our trust for victory is solely in God. We 
may be personally defeated, but our principles 

never! (i, 412.) 

* « * 

My reliance for the deliverance of the op- 
pressed universally is upon the nature of man, 
the inherent wrongfulness of oppression, the 
power of truth, and the omnipotence of God — 
using every rightful instrumentality to hasten 
the jubilee, (iii, 401.) 

* « * 

Rather than see men wearing their chains 
in a cowardly and servile spirit, I would, as an 
advocate of peace, much rather see them break- 
ing the head of the tyrant with their chains. 
Give me, as a non-resistant. Bunker Hill, and 
Lexington, and Concord, rather than the cow- 
ardice and servility of a Southern slave-planta- 
tion, (iii, 492.) 

« « * 

Whenever there is a contest between the 
oppressed and the oppressor, — the weapons 



10 THE WORDS OF GARRISON 

being equal between the parties, — God knows 
that my heart must be with the oppressed, 
and always against the oppressor. Therefore, 
whenever commenced, I cannot but wish suc- 
cess to all slave insurrections, (iii, 492.) 

« * * 

A word upon the subject of Peace. I am a 
non-resistant — a believer in the inviolability 
of human life, under all circumstances ; I, 
therefore, in the name of God, disarm John 
Brown, and every slave at the South. But I 
do not stop there ; if I did, I should be a 
monster. I also disarm, in the name of God, 
every slaveholder and tyrant in the world. 
For wherever that principle is adopted, all fet- 
ters must instantly melt, and there can be no 
oppressed and no oppressor in the nature of 
things, (iii, 491.) 

* * * 

I believe in the spirit of peace, and in sole 
and absolute reliance on truth and the applica- 
tion of it to the hearts and consciences of the 
people. I do not believe that the weapons of 
liberty ever have been, or ever can be, the 
weapons of despotism, (iii, 473.) 

■sf * * 



AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL 1 1 

I hate slavery as I hate nothing else in this 
world. It is not only a crime, but the sum of 
all criminality ; not only a sin, but the sin 
of sins against Almighty God. I cannot be at 
peace with it at any time, to any extent, under 
any circumstances. That I have been per- 
mitted to witness its overthrow calls for ex- 
pressions of devout thanksgiving to Heaven. 

(iv, 147.) 

* * * 

I have never allowed a single number of [the 
Liberator^ to go forth to the world without 
feeling that it would do something to redeem 
that world from sin and error, (iii, 268.) 

* * * 

In short, I did what I could for the re- 
demption of the human race, (ii, 410.) 

•if « * 

When one stands alone with God for truth, 
for liberty, for righteousness, he may glory in 
his isolation ; but when the principle which 
kept him isolated has at last conquered, then 
to glory in isolation seems to me no evidence 
of courage or fidelity, (iv, 160.) 

* ^f * 

To-day, it is popular to be President of the 
American Anti-Slavery Society. Hence, my 



12 THE WORDS OF GARRISON 

connection with it terminates here and now, 
both as a member and as its presiding officer. 

(iv, 1 6 1.) 

* * * 

As for myself, I deem it, with the apostle, 
a small thing to be judged of man's judgment. 
I solicit no man's praise — I fear no man's 

censure, (i, 462.) 

* * * 

I ask, deserve, and expect the praise of no 
individuals for my labors ; because I am merely 
endeavoring to perform my duty, (i, 187.) 

* * * 

The truth is, he who commences any reform 
which at last becomes one of transcendent im- 
portance and is crowned with victory, is always 
ill judged and unfairly estimated. At the out- 
set he is looked upon with contempt, and 
treated in the most opprobrious manner, as a 
wild fanatic or a dangerous disorganizer. In 
due time the cause grows and advances to its 
sure triumph ; and in proportion as it nears 
the goal, the popular estimate of his character 
changes, till finally excessive panegyric is sub- 
stituted for outrageous abuse. The praise on 
the one hand, and the defamation on the other, 
are equally unmerited. In the clear light of 



AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL 13 

Reason, it will be seen that he simply stood up 
to discharge a duty which he owed to his God, 
to his fellow-men, to the land of his nativity. 
(iii. 314-) 



* * * 



So far as I am personally concerned, I feel 
no interest in any history of it [the anti-slavery 
struggle] that may be written. It is enough 
for me that every yoke is broken and every 
bondman set free. Yet there are lessons to be 
drawn from it that cannot fail to be serviceable 
to posterity. The millennial state, if it ever 
come on earth, is yet in the far distant future. 
There are innumerable battles yet to be fought 
for the right, many wrongs to be redressed, 
many evil customs abolished, many usurpa- 
tions overthrown, many deliverances wrought ; 
and those who shall hereafter go forth to de- 
fend the righteous cause, no matter at what 
cost or with what disparity of numbers, cannot 
fail to derive strength and inspiration from an 
intelligent acquaintance with the means and 
methods used in the anti-slavery movement, 
(iv, 258.) 



* * * 



The one distinct and emphatic lesson which 
I shall teach my children is, to take nothing 



14 THE WORDS OF GARRISON 

upon mere authority — to dare to differ in opin- 
ion from their father, and from all the world — 
to understand, as clearly as possible, what can 
be said against or in favor of any doctrine or 
practice, and then to accept or reject it accord- 
ing to their own convictions of duty, (iii, 269.) 

* * * 

Reason has prevailed with me more than 
popular opinion, (i, 121.) 

* * « 

We are bound by no denominational tram- 
mels ; we are not political partisans ; we have 
taken upon our lips no human creed ; we are 
guided by no human authority ; we cannot 
consent to wear the livery of any fallible 
body, (ii, 200.) 



* * * 



We cannot acknowledge allegiance to any 
human government ; neither can we oppose 
any such government by a resort to physical 
force. We recognize but one King and Law- 
giver, one Judge and Ruler of mankind. 
We are bound by the laws of a kingdom 
which is not of this world ; the subjects of 
which are forbidden to fight ; in which Mercy 
and Truth are met together, and Righteous- 
ness and Peace have kissed each other ; which 



AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL 15 

has no state lines, no national partitions, no 
geographical boundaries ; in which there is no 
distinction of rank, or division of caste, or 
inequality of sex ; the officers of which are 
Peace, its exactors Righteousness, its walls 
Salvation, and its gates Praise ; and which 
is destined to break in pieces and consume all 
other kingdoms, (ii, 230.) 

* * * 
My trust is in God, my aim to walk in 
the footsteps of his Son, my rejoicing to be 
crucified to the world, and the world to me. 

The TRUTH that we utter is impalpable, yet 
real ; it cannot be thrust down by brute force, 
nor pierced with a dagger, nor bribed with 
gold, nor overcome by the application of a 

coat of tar and feathers. (W, 389.) 

* * « 
If by the shedding of our blood the lives 
of our enemies may be saved, let it be shed, 
(i, 518.) 

For myself, I ask no physical violence to be 
exerted for my protection, and I acknowledge 
no other government than that of the Most 
High, (ii, 30.) 



i6 THE WORDS OF GARRISON 

The desire of putting my enemies into a 
prison, or inflicting any kind of chastisement 
upon them, except of a moral kind, is utterly 
eradicated from my breast, (ii, 225.) 

* « * 

My memory can no more retain the im- 
pression of anger, hatred, or revenge than the 
ocean the track of its monsters, (i, 187.) 

* * * 

It appears to us a self-evident truth, that, 
whatever the gospel is designed to destroy at 
any period of the world, being contrary to it, 
ought now to be abandoned, (ii, 122') 



SLAVERY 
No Union with Slaveholders ! (iii, lOO.) 

■K" ^ "3^ 

The compact which exists between the 
North and the South is "a covenant with 
death and an agreement with hell" — involv- 
ing both parties in atrocious criminality — and 
should be immediately annulled, (iii, 88.) 

* * * 

Freedom and Slavery are natural and irre- 
concilable enemies ; it is morally impossible 
for them to exist together in the same nation ; 
and the existence of the one can only be secured 
by the destruction of the other. 

Slavery has exercised a pernicious and most 
dangerous influence in the affairs of this Union, 
from its foundation to the present time [i 840] ; 
this influence has increased, is increasing, and 
cannot be destroyed, except by the destruction 
of slavery or the Union, (ii, 338.) 

* * * 

In the beginning, what a gross absurdity 
did our fathers exhibit ! — trying to do what 
is not in the power of God — to reconcile the 



i8 THE WORDS OF GARRISON 

irreconcilable — to make Slavery and Freedom 
mingle and cohere ! It can never be. Look 
at the lover of freedom and the advocate of 
slavery, the slaveholder and the abolitionist, 
at this day. Do they acknowledge the same 
God ? Do they worship at the same shrine ? 
A government composed of both is impos- 
sible ; and he who would pass for a lover of 
freedom, should have found it out. (iii, 141.) 

* * « 

The truth is, our fathers were intent on 
securing liberty to themselves, without being 
very scrupulous as to the means they used 
to accomplish their purpose. They were not 
actuated by the spirit of universal philan- 
thropy ; and though in words they recognized 
occasionally the brotherhood of the human 
race, in practice they continually denied it. 
They did not blush to enslave a portion of 
their fellow-men, and to buy and sell them as 
cattle in the market, while they were fighting 
against the oppression of the mother country, 
and boasting of their regard for the rights of 

man. (iii, 109.) 

* * * 

Suppose that — by a miracle — the slaves 
should suddenly become white. Would you 



SLAVERY 19 

shut your eyes upon their sufferings, and 
calmly talk of Constitutional limitations ? 

(h I33-) 

«• * * 

In the present struggle, the test of charac- 
ter is as infallible as it is simple. He that is 
with the slaveholder is against the slave ; he 
that is with the slave is against the slave- 
holder. (W, 141.) 

* * * 

Is it not to be sorely pressed, yea, to yield 
the whole ground, to represent any class of 
our fellow-creatures as being on the same level 
with wild beasts ? To such a desperate shift 
does the slaveholder resort, to screen himself 
from condemnation. The negroes, he avers, 
are an inferior race, — a connecting link be- 
tween men and monkeys, — and therefore it is 
folly to talk of giving them liberty and equal 
rights, (iii, 436.) 

* * * 

Is there one law of submission and non- 
resistance for the black man, and another law 
of rebellion and conflict for the white man ? 
When it is the whites who are trodden in the 
dust, does Christ justify them in taking up 
arms to vindicate their rights ? And when it 



20 THE WORDS OF GARRISON 

is the blacks who are thus treated, does Christ 
require them to be patient, harmless, long- 
sufFering, and forgiving ? And are there two 

Chris ts? (iii, 362.) 

* * * 

God never made a tyrant, nor a slave. 

(", 432.) 

* * * 

Has not the experience of two centuries 
shown that gradualism in theory is perpetuity 
in practice? Is there an instance, in the his- 
tory of the world, where slaves have been 
educated for freedom by their taskmasters ? 

* * * 

I believe that nothing but the exterminat- 
ing judgments of heaven can shatter the chain 
of the slave and destroy the power of his op- 
pressor. The wildest animals may be tamed, 
in the course of time; but tyrants, as all history 
shows, must be destroyed, (ii, 184.) 

* * * 

We would rather, if this must be the alter- 
native, that the most exorbitant pecuniary ex- 
actions of the slave tyrants should be com- 
plied with than that their victims should never 
be set free, (iii, 210.) 



<* 



SLAVERY 21 

I am as much interested in the safety and 
welfare of the slaveholders, as brother-men, 
as I am in the liberation of their poor slaves, 
(iv, 42.) 

^ % "5^ 

I pray you to remember that the slave- 
holders are just as merciful and forbearing as 
they can be in their situation, — not a whit 
more brutal, bloody, satanic than they are 
obliged to be in the terrible exigencies in 
which, as slaveholders, they are placed. They 
are men of like passions with ourselves ; they 
are of our common country ; and if we had 
been brought up in the midst of slavery, as 
they have been, — if we had our property in 
slaves, as they have, — if we had had the 
same training and education that they have re- 
ceived, of course, we should have been just as 
much disposed to do all in our power to sup- 
port slavery, and to put down freedom, by 
the same atrocious acts, as themselves. The. 
tree bears its natural fruit, — like causes will 
produce like effects. But let us return them 
good for evil, by seizing this opportunity to 
deliver them from their deadliest curse, — that 
is Christian, (iv, 32.) 

* * * 



22 THE WORDS OF GARRISON 

Genuine abolitionism is not a hobby, got up 
for personal or associated aggrandizement ; it 
is not a political ruse ; it is not a spasm of sym- 
pathy, which lasts but for a moment, leaving 
the system weak and worn ; it is not a fever of 
enthusiasm ; it is not the fruit of fanaticism ; 
it is not a spirit of faction. It is of heaven, not 
of men. It lives in the heart as a vital prin- 
ciple. It is an essential part of Christianity, and 
aside from it there can be no humanity. Its 
scope is not confined to the slave population 
of the United States, but embraces mankind. 
Opposition cannot weary it out, force cannot 
put it down, fire cannot consume it. It is the 
spirit of Jesus, who was sent " to bind up the 
broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the cap- 
tives, and the opening of the prison to them 
that are bound ; to proclaim the acceptable 
year of the Lord, and the day of vengeance of 
our God.** Its principles are self-evident, its 
measures rational, its purposes merciful and 
just. It cannot be diverted from the path of 
duty, though all earth and hell oppose ; for it 
is Hfted far above all earth-born fear.. When it 
fairly takes possession of the soul, you may 
trust the soul-carrier anywhere, that he will not 
be recreant to humanity. In short, it is a life. 



SLAVERY 23 

not an Impulse — a quenchless flame of phi- 
lanthropy, not a transient spark of sentimen- 
talism. {Liberator /\yiy 11^,) 



* « * 



I pray you, abolitionists, ... do not get 
impatient ; do not become exasperated ; do not 
attempt any new political organization ; do not 
make yourselves familiar with the idea that 
blood must flow. Perhaps blood will flow — 
God knows, I do not ; but it shall not flow 
through any counsel of mine. Much as I de- 
test the oppression exercised by the Southern 
slaveholder, he is a man, sacred before me. 
He is a man, not to be harmed by my hand 
nor with my consent. He is a man, who is 
grievously and wickedly trampling upon the 
rights of his fellow-man ; but all I have to do 
with him is to rebuke his sin, to call him to re- 
pentance, to leave him without excuse for his 
tyranny. He is a sinner before God — a great 
sinner ; yet, while I will not cease reprobating 
his horrible injustice, I will let him see that in 
my heart there is no desire to do him harm, 
— that I wish to bless him here, and bless 
him everlastingly, — and that I have no other 
weapon to wield against him but the simple 
truth of God, which is the great instrument 



24 THE WORDS OF GARRISON 

for the overthrow of all iniquity and the salva- 
tion of the world, (iii, 473.) 

* * * 

The success of any great moral enterprise 
does not depend upon numbers. Slavery will 
be overthrown before a majority of all the 
people shall have called voluntarily, and 
on the score of principle, for its abolition. 

* * * 

The hour is coming when men of all sects 
and of all parties at the North will rally under 
one banner — the banner of liberty; and 
a similar coalition will be seen at the South 
rallying under the black flag of slavery. 
It will not be a strife of blood, but a conflict 
of opinions, and it will be short and decisive. 
Possibly, in that hour, the South may yield 
(and such a surrender would be to her victory 
and renown), — possibly, the spirit of despera- 
tion may triumph over her instinct of self-pre- 
servation ; but, in either case, the fate of slavery 
would be sealed, the character of the North 
redeemed, and an example given to mankind 
worthy to be recorded on the brightest page of 
history, (iii, 87, 88.) 

* * * 



SLAVERY 25 

When I said I would not sustain the Con- 
stitution because it was " a covenant with death 
and an agreement with hell," / had no idea that 
I should live to see death and hell secede, (iv, 40.) 

* * * 

One million of degraded slaves are more 
dangerous to the welfare of the country than 
would be two millions of degraded freemen. 

(i, 1 44-) 



NON-RESISTANCE 

Non-resistance is based upon the teach- 
ings, doctrines, examples, and spirit of Christ. 
Christ is its pattern, its theme, its hope, its re- 
joicing, its advocate and protector, its author 
and finisher, its Alpha and Omega, (iii, 15.) 

* * vf 

We know not where to look for Christian- 
ity if not to its founder ; and, taking the record 
of his life and death, of his teaching and ex- 
ample, we can discover nothing which even 
remotely, under any conceivable circumstances, 
justifies the use of the sword or rifle on the 
part of his followers ; on the contrary, we find 
nothing but self-sacrifice, willing martyrdom 
(if need be), peace and good-will, and the pro- 
hibition of all retaliatory feelings enjoined 
upon all who would be his disciples. When 
he said : " Fear not those who kill the body/* 
he broke every deadly weapon. When he said : 
" My kingdom is not of this world, else would 
my servants fight that I should not be deUv- 
ered to the Jews,'* he plainly prohibited war 
in self-defense, and substituted martyrdom 



NON-RESISTANCE 27 

therefor. When he said : " Love your ene- 
mies," he did not mean, " Kill them if they 
go too far." When he said, while expiring on 
the cross : " Father, forgive them ; for they 
know not what they do," he did not treat 
them as " a herd of buffaloes," but as poor, 
misguided, and lost men. We believe in his 
philosophy ; we accept his instruction ; we are 
thrilled by his example ; we rejoice in his fidel- 
ity. How touching is the language of James ! 
" Ye have condemned and killed the just ; 
and he doth not resist youJ' And how melt- 
ing to the soul is the declaration : " He was 
led as a lamb to the slaughter ! " And again : 
" God commendeth his love towards us in that, 
while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." 

0"> 437-) 

* -K- * 

In the name of Jesus of Nazareth, who suf- 
fered himself to be unresistingly nailed to the 
cross, we solemnly protest against any of his 
professed followers resorting to carnal weapons 
under any pretext or in any extremity what- 
ever, (ii, 190.) 

* * * 

We register our testimony, not only against 
all wars, whether offensive or defensive, but 



28 THE WORDS OF GARRISON 

all preparations for war ; against every naval 
ship, every arsenal, every fortification ; against 
the militia system and a standing army ; against 
all military chieftains and soldiers ; against all 
monuments commemorative of victory over a 
fallen foe, all trophies won in battle, all cele- 
brations in honor of military or naval exploits ; 
against all appropriations for the defense of a 
nation by force and arms, on the part of any 
legislative body ; against every edict of gov- 
ernment requiring of its subjects military ser- 
vice. Hence we deem it unlawful to bear arms, 
or to hold a military office, (ii, 231.) 

* * * 

The unit cannot be of greater importance 
than the aggregate. If one man may take life, 
to obtain or defend his rights, the same license 
must necessarily be granted to communities, 
states, and nations. If be may use a dagger or 
a pistol, tbey may employ cannon, bomb-shells, 
land and naval forces, (ii, 231.) 

* * * 

It cannot be true, as a moral proposi- 
tion, that if it is wrong to inflict injuries, it 
is right to retaliate when they are inflicted. 

(W, 82.) 

* * * 



NON-RESISTANCE 29 

The history of mankind is crowded with 
evidences proving that physical coercion is 
not adapted to moral regeneration ; that the 
sinful dispositions of man can be subdued only 
by love ; that evil can be exterminated from 
the earth only by goodness ; that it is not safe 
to rely upon an arm of flesh, upon man whose 
breath is in his nostrils, to preserve us from 
harm ; that there is great security in being 
gentle, harmless, long-suffering, and abundant 
in mercy ; that it is only the meek who shall 
inherit the earth, for the violent who resort 
to the sword shall perish with the sword. 
Hence, as a measure of sound policy, of safety 
to property, life, and liberty — of public qui- 
etude and private enjoyment — as well as on 
the ground of allegiance to Him who is King 
of kings and Lord of lords, we cordially adopt 
the non-resistance principle ; being confident 
that it provides for all possible consequences, 
will insure all things needful to us, is armed 
with omnipotent power, and must ultimately 
triumph over every assailing force, (ii, 232.) 

4f * vf 

Of what value or utility are the principles of 
peace and forgiveness, if we may repudiate them 
in the hour of peril and suffering? (ii, 18.) 



30 THE WORDS OF GARRISON 

War is as capable of moral analysis as sla- 
very, intemperance, licentiousness, or idolatry. 
It is not an abstraction, which admits of doubt 
or uncertainty, but as tangible as bombs, can- 
non, mangled corpses, smouldering ruins, des- 
olated towns and villages, rivers of blood. It 
is substantially the same in all ages, and cannot 
change its moral features. To trace it in all its 
ramifications is not a difficult matter. In fact, 
nothing is more terribly distinct than its career ; 
it leaves its impress on everything it touches, 
whether physical, mental, or moral. (W, 90.) 

* « * 

Why should we go to a book to settle the 
character of war, when we could judge of it by 
its fruits ? (iii, 228.) 

* * * 
Non-resistance versus brickbats and bowie- 
knives! Omnipotence against a worm of the 
dust! Divine law against lynch law! How 
unequal ! (ii, 219.) 

* « * 

The dogma that all the governments of the 
world are approvingly ordained of God, and 
that THE POWERS THAT BE in the United States, 
in Russia, in Turkey, are in accordance with his 
will, is not less absurd than impious, (ii, 23 1.) 



NON-RESISTANCE 31 

Human governments are to be viewed as 
judicial punishments, (ii, 203 •) 



* * * 



May grace, mercy, and peace" be with you 
and yours, now and evermore ! (iii, 475.) 



PERFECTIONISM 

Religion is nothing but love — perfect love 
toward God and toward man — without for- 
mality, without hypocrisy, without partiality — 
depending upon no outward form to preserve 
its vitaHty or prove its existence, (ii, 212.) 

* * * 

Who talks of weariness in Freedom's cause. 

Knows nothing of its life-sustaining power j 
Who in the conflict for the right would pause, 

Beneath a tyrant's rod was made to cower; 
Who something loves more than his brother man, — 

Holds it more sacred, at a higher price, — 
Fails to discern Redemption's glorious plan, 

Or in what sense Christ is our sacrifice ; 
Who stands aloof from those who are agreed 

In charity to aid and bless mankind. 
Because they walk not by his narrow creed. 

Himself among the fallen spirits shall find ; 

Who would show loyalty to God must be 

At all times true in man's extremity. 

(W, 286.) 

* * * 

Of the millions who profess to believe in the 
Bible as the inspired word of God, how few 



PERFECTIONISM 33 

there are who have had the wish or the cour- 
age to know on what ground they have formed 
their opinion ! (iii, 145, 146.) 

* * * 

Your peace and anti-slavery views commend 
themselves to your understanding, your con- 
science, and your heart ; perhaps you will dis- 
cover that your theological views have really 
little to do with your understanding, your con- 
science, or your heart, independently and ab- 
solutely, like the others, (iii, 267.) 

^ * % 

There are, in fact, few reasoning Christians ; 
the majority of them are swayed more by the 
usages of the world than by any definite per- 
ception of what constitutes duty — so far, we 
mean, as relates to the subjugation of vices 
which are incorporated, as it were, into the 
existence of society ; else why is it that intem- 
perance, and slavery, and war have not ere 
this in a measure been driven from our land? 

0,84,85.) 

* * * 

If the Bible be, from Genesis to Revelation, 
divinely inspired, its warmest partisans need 
not be concerned as to its fate. It is to be 
examined with the same freedom as any other 



34 THE WORDS OF GARRISON 

book, and taken precisely for what it is worth. 
. . . To say that everything contained within 
the lids of the Bible is divinely inspired, and 
to insist upon the dogma as fundamentally 
important, is to give utterance to a bold fiction, 
and to require the suspension of the reasoning 
faculties. To say that everything in the Bible 
is to be believed, simply because it is found 
in that volume, is equally absurd and perni- 
cious, (iii, 146.) 

* « * 

It is a secondary question as to when, where, 
or by whom the books of the Old and New 
Testaments were written ; but the primary and 
all-important question is. What do they teach 
and command? (iii, 386.) 

* * * 

[The Bible is] a volume to be studied, 
criticised, and judged, without prejudice, cre- 
dulity, superstition, or regard to any popular 
or prevailing interpretation thereof, and with 
the same freedom as any other book or com- 
pilation of ancient manuscripts ; in which case, 
reason and conscience holding mastery over 
it, it will still be found deserving of the high- 
est consideration for its incomparable truths, 



PERFECTIONISM 35 

solemn warnings, and precious promises. (In- 
scription in a Bible to his namesake, 1875.) 

* * * 

A belief in Jesus is no evidence of good- 
ness, (iii, 289.) 

* * * 

Of what value are professions where fruits 
are wanting ? or what need of professions 
where fruits abound? (ii, 176.) 

* * * 

How can a people fast or be thankful at the 
bidding or request of any man or body of 
men ? (ii, 51.) 



* * * 



The right of every man to worship God ac- 
cording to the dictates of his own conscience 
is inherent, inalienable, self-evident, (iii, 222.) 

* «■ * 

The Sabbath, as now recognized and en- 
forced, is one of the main pillars of Priestcraft 
and Superstition, and the stronghold of a 
merely ceremonial Religion, (iii, 224.) 

* * * 

To expose the popular delusion which pre- 
vails on this subject is to advance the cause of 
a pure Christianity, to promote true and ac- 
ceptable worship, and to inculcate strict moral 



36 THE WORDS OF GARRISON 

and religious accountability in all the concerns 

of lifCj ON ALL DAYS OF THE WEEK ALIKE. (iii, 
225.) 

'5s' w w 

No man who has not consecrated all his 
time to the service of God has ever conse- 
crated a seventh part of it. . . . No man who 
reverently regards all days as holy unto the 
Lord will desecrate either the first or the 
seventh day of the week, (ii, 176.) 

* * * 

— to keep 

Not one in seven, but all days holy. (ii, 154.) 

* * * 

Dear is the Christian Sabbath to my heart, 

Bound by no forms, from times and seasons free ; 

The whole of life absorbing, not a part ; 
Perpetual rest and perfect liberty ! 

Who keeps not this, steers by a Jewish chart. 
And sails in peril on a storm-tossed sea. (iii, 9.) 

* * * 

If men cannot help sinning, then they are 
not guilty in attempting to serve two masters. 

(iii, 15.) 

* * « 

Now what is the point in controversy ? Not, 
who is a Christian, or whether this or that in- 
dividual has attained to a state of " sinless per- 



PERFECTIONISM 37 

fection " ; but whether human beings, in this 
life, may and ought to serve God with all 
their mind and strength, and to love their 
neighbor as themselves ! Whether " total ab- 
stinence " from all sin is not as obligatory as 
it is from any one sin ! (iii, 12.) 

* * « 

No matter how many, who pretend to keep 
" the royal law " perfectly, break it in their 
walk and conversation, and are either hypo- 
crites or self-deceivers : that law should be 
proclaimed as essential to the recovery of 
mankind from their fallen condition ; and no 
violation of it by those who profess to observe 
it, can make it nugatory, (iii, 15.) 

vt % <f 

Instead, therefore, of assailing the doctrine^ 
" Be ye perfect, even as your Father in Hea- 
ven is perfect,'* let us all aim to establish it, 
not merely as theoretically right, but as prac- 
tically attainable ; and if we are conscious that 
we are not yet wholly clean, not yet entirely 
reconciled to God, not yet filled with perfect 
love, let us, instead of resisting the light and 
the truth, and denying that freedom from sin 
is a Christian's duty and privilege, confess and 
forsake our sins — give no quarter to unright- 



38 THE WORDS OF GARRISON 

eousness — put on the whole armor of God, 
that we may be able to stand against the wiles 
of the devil — believe with all the heart — 
exercise that faith which overcomes the world, 
and therefore that cannot be overcome by 
anything that is in the world — and be willing 
to be wholly delivered from the power of dark- 
ness, and translated into the kingdom of God*s 
dear Son. (iii, 13, 14.) 

* * * 

I will not put up the superfluous petition : 
" May the blessings of those who are ready to 
perish rest upon your head ! " — because they 
do now rest upon it. I will not add : " God 
bless you !" — as it might seem to imply that 
he had been " slack concerning his promises,*' 
and was growing forgetful. " Blessed are^^' not 
shall bey " the merciful. Blessed are they who 
are persecuted for righteousness' sake,'* etc., 
etc. The reward is ever in the performance 
of the deed, (iii, 432.) 

* * « 

The clergy will come whenever their flocks 
take up the line of march, (ii, 1 74.) 



POLITICS 

The mysteries of government are only the 
juggles of usurpers and demagogues. There 
is nothing intricate in freedom, free labor, free 
institutions, the law of interchange, the mea- 
sure of reciprocity. It is the legerdemain of 
class legislation, disregarding the common in- 
terests of the people, that creates confusion, 
sophisticates the judgment, and dazzles to be- 
tray. The law of gravitation needs no legisla- 
tive props or safeguards to make its operations 
more effective or more beneficent, (iv, 26 2.) 

* * * 

A pohtical contest differs essentially from 
one that is moral. In the latter, one may 
chase a thousand, and two put ten thousand to 
flight. In the former, profligacy and virtue, 
good and evil, right and wrong meet on equal 
terms. Success depends wholly on numerical 
superiority, (ii, 436.) 

* * * 

Is there one man in the United States — in 
the whole world — who can honestly and truly 
aflirm, before God, that by becoming a politi- 



40 THE WORDS OF GARRISON 

clan he has improved his manners or morals, 
his head or his heart, or has elevated the tone 
of his piety, or felt new emotions of spiritual 
life ? . . . Are there not thousands of good 
men who have a far different confession to 
make? (ii, 437.) 



FREE TRADE 

1 avow myself to be a radical free trader, 
even to the extent of desiring the abolition 
of all custom-houses, as now constituted, 
throughout the world, (iv, 16;^.) 

* * * 

If, in an open field, we cannot successfully 
compete with " the cheap and pauperized labor 
of Europe," in all that is necessary to our 
comfort, or even to our luxury, then let us 
go to the wall ! Was the slave labor of the 
South at all a match for the free labor of the 
North ? In which section of the Union was 
industry best protected or wealth most aug- 
mented ? Is it not ludicrous to read what 
piteous calls are made for the protection of 
the strong against the weak, of the intelligent 
against the ignorant, of the well-fed against 
the half-starving, of our free republican nation 
against the effete governments of the Old 
World, in all that relates to the welfare of the 
people? (iv, 265.) 

* * * 



42 THE WORDS OF GARRISON 

With all that God has done for us in giving 
us such a goodly heritage, cannot we contrive 
to live and flourish without erecting barriers 
against the freest intercourse with all nations ? 
Must we guard our ports against the free im- 
portation of hemp, iron, broadcloth, silk, coal, 
etc., etc., as though it were a question of quar- 
antine for the smallpox or the Asiatic cholera? 

(iv, 265.) 

* * * 

He is the most sagacious political econo- 
mist who contends for the highest justice, the 
most far-reaching equality, a close adherence 
to natural laws, and the removal of all those 
restrictions which foster national pride and self- 
ishness, (iv, 16^,) 



SOCIALISM 

That society is afflicted with many evils that 
are to be deplored, and that ought to be re- 
moved, is undeniable ; but that there is any 
analogy or comparison between the condition 
and chances of " the toiling masses " and those 
to which the millions recently brought out of 
the house of bondage were subjected, I cannot 
admit and do not believe. Besides the very 
aged and the very young, there are compara- 
tively few who are not more or less toiling 
with their brains or hands, in order to pro- 
cure the means of subsistence. " The toiling 
masses," therefore, can only be another appel- 
lation for the American people. What have 
they to complain of in regard to constitution 
and laws for which they are not directly re- 
sponsible ? What outside powder is subjecting 
them to wrongs and deprivations which call in 
thunder-tones for another emancipation cru- 
sade ? What inside power is comparable to 
their own collective will and unquestionable 
strength ? What new safeguards for their free- 



44 THE WORDS OF GARRISON 

dom, safety, and happiness do they need, that 

they have not the means to establish ? 

(iv, 249.) 
« * * 

You express the conviction that the present 
relation of capital to labor is " hastening the 
nation to its ruin," and that, if some remedy 
is not applied, it is difficult to see " how a 
bloody struggle is to be prevented." I enter- 
tain no such fears. Our danger lies in sensual 
indulgence, in a licentious perversion of lib- 
erty, in the prevalence of intemperance, and 
in whatever tends to the demoralization of the 

people, (iv, 249.) 

* * * 

The subject of social reorganization is at- 
tracting general attention, and exciting a grow- 
ing interest. Many schemes are in embryo, 
and others have had a birth and are now strug- 
gling for an existence. As experiments to bless 
our race, I feel an interest in them all, though 
I am not very sanguine as to the result of this 
new species of colonization, (iii, 81, 82.) 

* * * 

[Such a one] goes for a community of in- 
terest, and against all individual possessions, 
whether of land or its fruits, of labor or its 



SOCIALISM 45 

products ; but he does not act very consist- 
ently with his principles, though he says he 
does the best he can in the present state of 
society. He holds . . , that man is the crea- 
ture of circumstances, and therefore not de- 
serving of praise or blame for what he does, — 
a most absurd and demoralizing doctrine, in 
my opinion, which will make shipwreck of any 
man or any scheme under its guidance, in due 
season. Still, it cannot be denied that circum- 
stances are often very unfavorable to the devel- 
opment of man's faculties and moral nature ; 
and if, by a reorganization of society, these 
can be rendered more favorable, — as doubt- 
less they can, — let it take place. But it is an 
internal rather than an outward reorganization 
that is needed to put away the evil that is in 
the world, (iii, 94, 95.) 



WOMAN'S RIGHTS 

The natural rights of one human being are 
those of every other, in all cases equally sacred 
and inalienable; hence the boasted "Rights 
of Man," about which we hear so much, are 
simply the " Rights of Woman," of which we 
hear so little ; or, in other words, they are the 
Rights of Humanity, neither affected by, nor 
dependent upon, sex or condition. 

(iii, 391,392.) 

* 4f * 

As our object is universal emancipation, — 
to redeem woman as well as man from a ser- 
vile to an equal condition, — we shall go for 
the Rights of Woman to their utmost ex- 
tent, (ii, 204.) 

* * * 

I conceive that the first thing to be done by 
the women of this country is to demand their 
political enfranchisement. Among the " self- 
evident truths " announced in the Declaration of 
Independence is this: "All government derives 
it^ just power from the consent of the gov erne d,^^ 
Judging by this rule, the existing government 



WOMAN'S RIGHTS 47 

is a despotism. One half of the population is 
disfranchised on account of sex ; three millions 
are dehumanized on account of complexion ! 

(iii,3io.) 

* * * 

Suffrage is a right primarily given — by 
whom ? Where did Hancock and Adams, 
Washington and Jefferson, Revolutionary Fed- 
eralists and Republicans, Dr. Bushnell and 
the opposers of woman suffrage generally, get 
their right to vote ? Who gave them author- 
ity to choose their own rulers ? Women claim 
no other title to it than men assert for them- 
selves ; and that claim is as valid in the one 
case as it is in the other, (iv, 245.) 

* « * 

It is a fact, cognizable by the whole earth, 
that men always behave in the presence of wo- 
men better than when women are absent, as I 
presume the women behave a great deal better 
in the presence of men than when the men are 
absent, (iii, 311.) 



DEATH 

The longer I live, the longer I desire to 

live, and the more I see the desirableness of 

living ; yet certainly not in this frail body, but 

just as it shall please the dear Father of us all. 

(iv, 252.) 

* * * 

Death itself to me is not terrible, is not re- 
pulsive, is not to be deplored. I see in it as 
clear an evidence of Divine wisdom and bene- 
ficence as I do in the birth of a child, in the 
works of creation, in all the arrangements and 
operations of nature. I neither fear nor regret 
its power. I neither expect nor supplicate to 
be exempted from its legitimate action. It is 
not to be chronicled among calamities ; it is 
not to be styled " a mysterious dispensation 
of Divine Providence; " it is scarcely rational 
to talk of being resigned to it. For what is 
more natural — what more universal — what 
more impartial — what more serviceable — 
what more desirable, in God's own time, has- 
tened neither by our ignorance nor folly? 
Discarding, as I do, as equally absurd and 



DEATH 49 

monstrous, the theological dogma that death 
settles forever the condition of those who die, 
whether for an eternity of bliss or misery for 
the deeds done here in the body — and be- 
lieving, as I do, without doubt or wavering, in 
the everlasting progression of the human race, 
in the ultimate triumph of infinite love over 
finite error and sinfulness, in the fatherly care 
and boundless goodness of that Creator " whose 
tender mercies are over all the works of his 
hands '* — I see nothing strange, appalling, or 
even sad in death, (iii, 26^, 264.) 

« * * 
Where the cherished one who has been 
snatched from us is, what is his situation, or 
what his employment, I know not, of course ; 
and it gives me no anxiety whatever. Until I 
join him, at least, my responsibility to him as 
his guardian and protector has ceased ; he does 
not need my aid, he cannot be benefited by 
my counsel. That he will still be kindly cared 
for by Him who numbers the very hairs of 
our heads, and without whose notice a sparrow 
cannot fall to the ground ; that he is still liv- 
ing, having thrown aside his mortal drapery, 
and occupying a higher sphere of existence — 
I do not entertain a doubt, (iii, 264.) 



MISCELLANEOUS 

Since the creation of the world there has 
been no tyrant like Intemperance, and no 
slaves so cruelly treated as his. (i, a 6 8.) 

* * * 

A star of glory has in darkness waned — 

No more on earth survives the good man eloquent. 

(ii, 366.) 

* * * 

Let us be sparing of our panegyrics, recol- 
lecting that indiscriminate praise of the dead 
is often more injurious than the coarsest oblo- 
quy, (i, 63.) 

* * * 

[Of Fourth of July orators.] Their ora- 
tions should be composed, not merely of rhap- 
sodies upon the deeds of our fathers — of a 
tame repetition of the wrongs which they suf- 
fered, of ceaseless apostrophes to liberty, and 
fierce denunciations of tyranny — but they 
should also abound with wholesome political 
axioms and reflections ; the rock should be 
pointed out upon which other nations have 
split — the pruning-knife should lop oflf every 



MISCELLANEOUS 51 

excrescence of vanity — and our follies and 
virtues should be skillfully held up in equal 
light, (i, 66.) 

* * * 

It is possible that a people may bear the title 
of freemen who execute the work of slaves. 

(i, 128.) 

* * * 

The people may err — they often do ; they 
may be badly deceived — they often are ; but 
the people as such are never willfully deceived, 
nor are they hostile to their own interests. 
They may be deceived, but they will by and 
bye understand the deceptions and deal with 
the deceivers ; but you cannot possibly have 
a broader basis for any government than that 
which includes all the people, with all their 
rights in their hands, and with an equal power 
to maintain their rights, (iv, 224.) 

* * * 

What is government but the express image 
of the moral character of a people ? (ii, 151.) 

* * * 

We should, as nations, reciprocate rebukes. 
And as we send our souls to theirs, freighted 
with reproof and exhortation, let them meet 



52 THE WORDS OF GARRISON 

on the deep, and embrace as angel spirits, and 
pass on. (ii, 408.) 

* * * 

It seems to me that our intercourse with 
our fellow-men will be to little benefit if we 
confine ourselves to the consideration of topics 
about which we are already agreed, or which 
are of a trivial character, (iii, 171.) 

* * * 

Fine and delicate phraseology may please 
the ear ; but masculine truths are utterly di- 
vorced from effeminate words, and cannot be 
united without begetting a dwarfish progeny, 
(i, 460.) 



* * * 



It is the best investment for the souFs wel- 
fare possible, to take hold of something which 
is righteous but unpopular. Righteous but un- 
popular, for men may get hold of an unpopular 
cause which deserves to be unpopular and is 
not righteous, (iv, 278.) 

« « « 
We conceive that our obligation to do a 
righteous act is not at all dependent on the 
question whether we shall succeed in carrying 
the multitude with us. (iii, 103.) 

* * * 



MISCELLANEOUS 53 

Moral courage — duty — self-consecration 
— all have their proper limits. When he who 
knew no fear — the immaculate Redeemer — 
saw that his enemies intended to cast him 
down from the brow of a hill, he prudently 
withdrew from their midst. When he sent 
forth his apostles, he said unto them, " When 
they persecute you in one city, flee ye into 
another." (i, 507.) 



* « * 



Moral influence, when in vigorous exercise, 
is irresistible. It has an immortal essence. It 
can no more be trod out of existence by the 
iron foot of time, or by the ponderous march 
of iniquity, than matter can be annihilated. It 
may disappear for a time; but it lives in some 
shape or other, in some place or other, and 
will rise with renovated strength. (W, 58, ^g.) 

* * * 

It does not follow that the Almighty will 
crown with success all means and measures 
alike, for the furtherance of the cause of peace. 
... It is not enough that we have a good 
cause; this will avail us little or nothing un- 
less the principles which we advance, and the 
measures which we adopt to carry it forward, 
are just and appropriate, (iii, 80.) 



54 THE WORDS OF GARRISON 

Against this hateful spirit of caste [in the 
proscription of the Chinese] I have earnestly 
protested for the last fifty years, wherever it 
has developed itself, especially in the case of 
another class for many generations still more 
contemned, degraded, and oppressed ; and the 
time has fully come to deal with it as an offense 
to God, and a curse to the world wherever it 
seeks to bear sway. The Chinese are our fel- 
low-men, and are entitled to every considera- 
tion that our common humanity may justly 
claim. . . . Such of them as are seeking to 
better their condition, being among the poorer 
classes, by coming to these shores, we should 
receive with hospitality and kindness. If pro- 
perly treated, they cannot fail to be serviceable 
to ourselves or to improve their own condition. 
It is for them to determine what they shall 
eat, what they shall drink, and wherewithal 
they shall be clothed ; to adhere to their own 
customs and follow their own tastes as they 
shall choose ; to make their own contracts 
and maintain their own rights ; to worship 
God according to the dictates of their own con- 
sciences, or their ideas of religious duty. Such 
of them as may be in a filthy and squalid state 
we must endeavor to assist to a higher plane ; 



MISCELLANEOUS 55 

and if we would see them become converts to 
Christianity, we must show them its purifying 
and elevating power by our deaHngs with them, 
(iv, 299.) 

* «» * 

Long before the advent of Christ, it was 
from the lips of Confucius came that Golden 
Rule which we are taught in the Gospel to 
follow as the rule of Hfe in all our deaHngs 
with our fellow-men, and which, carried into 
practice, will insure peace, happiness, and pro- 
sperity not only to the dwellers of the Pacific 
Coast, but to all peoples on the face of the 
whole earth, (iv, 300.) 

* * 4& 

Whoever holds to an opinion or sentiment 
which he is not pleased to see dealt with boldly 
and searchingly, gives evidence that he is con- 
scious that it will not bear such treatment, or 
that he has taken it upon trust, usage, parental, 
educational, traditional authority, and not upon 
his own clear-wrought, unbiased convictions, 
(iii, 267.) 



* * * 



Who shall presume to say to another, in 
regard to the examination of any creed, book, 
ordinance, day, or form of government, — of 



56 THE WORDS OF GARRISON 

anything natural or reputedly miraculous, — 
" Thus far shalt thou go, but no farther " ? 
(iii, 267.) 



* * * 



More joy I feel, the first-born grassy spire 
To see, than greenest fields and fairest bowers : 
In full fruition there is lost desire. 

(S, 80.) 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 

OF 

WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 

William Lloyd Garrison was not born in 
Boston, nor did it happen to him to die in 
this city. It was, however, his home for two- 
thirds of his long life; no native loved it 
more dearly; and more, perhaps, than any 
one connected with its history he confirmed 
and widened its reputation as the philanthropic 
focus of the country. He came to it a needy 
type-setter, friendless and obscure. The noto- 
riety and influence which he acquired as an 
agitator were opposed to the sentiments and 
immediate pecuniary interests of the ruling 
classes — the so-called respectability — of Bos- 
ton. To them he appeared a vulgar and fa- 
natical intruder, tarnishing the fair fame of 
the city and injuring its Southern trade ; and 
when they mobbed him, in the vain effort to 
silence his propaganda, there was no consid- 
eration of wealth, or education, or lineage that 
could plead with them on his behalf 

His parents were humble folk, natives of 
the province of New Brunswick. The father. 



6o WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON 

Abijah Garrison, was a sailing-master, born on 
the St. John River of a Massachusetts mother 
— a man of a generous and social nature, a 
sanguine temperament, a considerable gift of 
literary expression, and the ordinary weak- 
nesses of a sailor. The mother, Fanny Lloyd, 
possessed exceptional physical beauty and 
strength and elevation of character, forfeiting 
home and parental affection rather than aban- 
don the Baptist faith, to which she early be- 
came a convert. In the year 1805 this couple 
removed from Nova Scotia to Newburyport, 
Mass., and here their son William was born, 
on December 10. 

The slender circumstances of the family 
were shortly reduced to poverty and depend- 
ence when the father abandoned it, for causes 
unknown, but supposed to relate to his in- 
temperance. The mother, with her three chil- 
dren, was forced to migrate in search of 
employment as a nurse, and settled first in 
Lynn and afterwards in Baltimore, where she 
died, after years of great bodily suffering, in 
1823. But Lloyd could not be happy away 
from his birthplace, where kind, if indigent, 
friends gave him a home and a chance to get 
a limited education at the grammar school. 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 6i 

He had proved too slight for the shoemaker's 
trade in Lynn, and the cabinet-maker's in 
Haverhill he did not like and ran away from. 
A happy fate, in 1818, provided an appren- 
ticeship in the office of the Newburyport 
" Herald,** and the boy not only soon mas- 
tered the printer's art and became the fore- 
man of the establishment, but presently began 
to write anonymously for the paper, and to 
have the joy of seeing his articles accepted. 
When his secret was found out, he was en- 
couraged and befriended by Caleb Cushing, 
the temporary editor of the " Herald," and 
exercised his pen on a great variety of topics, 
sentimental and political. 

In 1826, at the close of his apprenticeship, 
the young Garrison bought of Isaac Knapp 
the (Newburyport) " Essex Courant," and con- 
tinued it under the name of the " Free Press,'* 
justifying the new title by a programme of 
editorial independence from which he never 
deviated throughout his career. He gave hos- 
pitality in its columns to the first poetical 
productions of Whittier, whose shy genius 
he detected, and whom he sought out and 
urged to devote himself to literature. As yet 
Garrison had published nothing in verse him- 



62 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON 

self, and he never approached the level of his 
friend, the Quaker poet of humanity. But 
the poetic impulse was always strong in him, 
and the total number of his pieces (in which 
the sonnet form predominates) is very con- 
siderable. In the "Free Press" he showed 
already a capacity to be touched by the wrongs 
of the slave ; but his preoccupation at this 
time was political rather than reformatory. 
Towards the end of the year he relinquished 
the newspaper, which had not prospered, and 
went to Boston, where, for several months, he 
earned his living as a compositor at the case in 
various offices. Meanwhile, he followed with 
eager interest the doings of the National Re- 
publican (Federal) party, with which he was 
in full sympathy ; and in July, 1827, attended 
a caucus to nominate a successor to Daniel 
Webster in the House of Representatives. 
Rising to speak out of the regular time, he 
made so strong a plea in favor of Harrison 
Gray Otis that the managers were discon- 
certed, and were forced to adjourn the cau- 
cus in order to avoid a nomination that 
was distasteful to them. This interference, 
by a new-comer of low degree, was resented 
by a writer in the Boston " Courier," to 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 63 

whom Mr. Garrison retorted, in the same 
paper : — 

I sympathize with the gentleman in the diffi- 
culty which he found to learn my cognomination. 
It is true that my acquaintance in this city is lim- 
ited — I have sought for none. Let me assure him, 
however, that, if my life be spared, my name shall 
one day be known to the world, — at least to such 
extent that common inquiry shall be unnecessary. 
This, I know, will be deemed excessive vanity — 
but time shall prove it prophetic. 

The way to the fulfillment of this prophecy 
led him to take lodgings with the Rev. Wil- 
liam Collier, a Baptist city missionary, who 
had founded and was conducting the " Na- 
tional Philanthropist " — the first paper in the 
world devoted chiefly to the cause of temper- 
ance, and advocating total abstinence. Of this 
journal Mr. Garrison became the editor in 
January, 1828, and infused much vigor into 
it and the temperance enterprise. But his 
life-work was not to lie in that direction, 
though he ever remained true to the principles 
of a cause to which the sad experience of his 
father and his only brother would have sufficed 
to attach him. Among the transient boarders 
at Mr. Collier's house came, in March, 1828, 



64 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON 

Benjamin Lundy, a New Jersey Quaker (born 
in 1789), editor in Baltimore of the " Genius 
of Universal Emancipation." He was almost 
the first (and was now the only) American 
dedicated exclusively to the abolition of sla- 
very, with a perseverance and self-abnegation 
beyond all praise. Outside of him, his journal, 
and its few supporters, there was no anti- 
slavery life or movement in the whole coun- 
try, which lay dead to all humane instincts, 
so far as slavery was concerned, in the smoth- 
ering embrace of the Missouri Compromise 
of 1820. Though his person was insignificant 
and he was a poor speaker, being deaf, his 
earnestness and the goodness of his cause won 
him many converts in private, wherever his 
unwearied pedestrianism carried him. His 
visit to Boston proved a sore disappointment 
in its immediate aim, — the enlisting of the 
clergy in the anti-slavery agitation ; but in 
Mr. Garrison a youthful disciple was obtained 
who was worth them all. 

Still, the latter had not yet lost his interest 
in politics, and accepted an invitation from the 
National Republicans of Bennington, Vt., to 
edit a new paper there in behalf of the can- 
didacy of John Quincy Adams for reelection 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 65 

to the Presidency. The first number of the 
" Journal of the Times '' was issued in Octo- 
ber, 1828, and Mr. Garrison's salutatory gave 
evidence of his intention to use freely the 
liberty accorded him in his engagement, of 
advocating " the suppression of intemperance 
and its associate vices, the gradual emancipa- 
tion of every slave in the republic, and the 
perpetuity of national peace," — three ob- 
jects, the editor said, "which we shall pursue 
through life, whether in this place or else- 
where." He began at once to give practical 
effect to his anti-slavery doctrine, by cooperat- 
ing with Lundy for the abolition of slavery in 
the District of Columbia; and the latter, who 
eagerly watched the " Journal of the Times," 
at last journeyed from Baltimore to Benning- 
ton to entreat him to become an associate edi- 
tor, of the " Genius." The appeal was success- 
ful, and, at the end of his contract, in March, 
1829, Mr. Garrison bade good-by to his Green 
Mountain public, " to occupy a broader field, 
and to engage in a higher enterprise." 

Pending Lundy's absence in Hayti he re- 
turned to Boston, and received in June an 
invitation to deliver a Fourth of July address 
at Park Street Church, under the auspices of 



66 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON 

the Congregational societies of the city, and 
in behalf of the American Colonization So- 
ciety. This society had been founded osten- 
sibly to improve the condition (otherwise 
hopeless, it was alleged) of the free blacks, by 
exporting them to Liberia, along with such 
slaves as might be emancipated for the purpose. 
Slaveholders were among its founders and offi- 
cers, and slaveholding was no bar to member- 
ship. When collecting funds abroad, great 
stress was laid upon its being an emancipation 
society ; at home, any intention to meddle with 
the system of slavery was carefully disclaimed. 
Of all this Mr. Garrison was ignorant, and in 
fact he had very little to say about the Society 
in his discourse, while dwelling forcibly upon 
the enormities of slavery, the national disgrace 
and peril of it, and the duty of the free States 
to assist in its overthrow. 

From gradual emancipation Mr. Garrison's 
mind had worked its way, before he set out 
for Baltimore, to immediate and unconditional 
emancipation as the only vital measure of 
reform. He frankly compared views with 
Lundy, a gradualist, on joining him, and it 
was agreed that each should sign his articles 
in the " Genius," and urge the common end 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 67 

in his own way. The result was, that many 
of the subscribers to the paper were greatly 
disturbed by the new doctrine, and that the 
list began rapidly to fall off, in spite of all 
Lundy's efforts to replenish it. In Novem- 
ber, 1829, the partnership and the paper 
received a fatal blow. A Newburyport mer- 
chant, Francis Todd, had allowed one of his 
ships to convey a cargo of slaves from Balti- 
more to New Orleans, and this circumstance 
filled his townsman with indignation and hor- 
ror. Mr. Garrison used the " Genius " to 
denounce the domestic slave-trade, of which 
this was an example, and " to illustrate New 
England humanity and morality." " I am re- 
solved," he said, " to cover with thick in- 
famy all who were concerned in this nefarious 
business." A civil suit for damages was, in 
consequence, begun by Mr. Todd ; but Mr. 
Garrison was first tried on an indictment for 
libel by the Baltimore Grand Jury, and, hav- 
ing been convicted, was sent to jail, on April 
17, 1830, in default of a fine and costs exceed- 
ing one hundred dollars. 

So far from being cast down by this first 
experience of the spirit of slavery. Garrison's 
buoyancy and mental activity were never 



68 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON 

greater than in the forty-nine days of his im- 
prisonment. He interested himself in the 
cases of his fellow-inmates ; he rebuked slave- 
holders coming to the jail to reclaim fugitives ; 
he composed anti-slavery addresses, and verses 
of which the sonnet "Freedom of the Mind" 
is in his best vein, and well illustrates the ex- 
altation of his mood." 

More than this, he wrote letters to the 
Boston " Courier " and the Newburyport 
" Herald," by which his fate, as an American 
citizen denied freedom of speech, was widely 
published, and excited both indignation and 
sympathy. The report of his trial moved Ar- 
thur Tappan, in particular, a princely merchant 
philanthropist of New York, to offer to pay 
Mr. Garrison's fine and to help reestablish the 
"Genius." On June 5, 1830, Lundy's part- 
ner was accordingly released ; but a visit to 
Massachusetts to raise funds for the " Genius " 
proved unavailing, and Mr. Garrison projected 
a paper of his own, to be published in Wash- 
ington. He returned once more to Massachu- 
setts, lecturing on slavery by the way to mixed 
audiences, and October found him in Boston, 
endeavoring in vain to secure the free use of a 
' See ante, page 7. 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 69 

church or hall for a course of lectures on the 
same subject. An "infidel" society at length 
tendered him Julien Hall, formerly standing 
on the northwest corner of Milk and Congress 
Streets, and there, on October 15, Mr. Garri- 
son delivered his first discourse, having among 
his auditors Dr. Lyman Beecher, Rev. Ezra S. 
Gannett, Rev. Samuel J. May, A. Bronson 
Alcott, and Samuel E. Sewall. His remarks, 
which were particularly directed against the 
Colonization Society, powerfully affected Mr. 
May and his kinsmen, Messrs. Sewall and Al- 
cott, and they at once attached themselves to 
the speaker, who gave three subsequent lec- 
tures in the same hall and elsewhere. 

The support of Messrs. May and Sewall 
was the turning-point in Garrison's career. It 
encouraged him to abandon his design of going 
to Washington to establish a paper which was 
more needed at the North, and he thereupon 
formed a partnership with his townsman, Isaac 
Knapp (who had lately rejoined him in Bal- 
timore), to issue a weekly paper, called the 
" Liberator." This tiny sheet, with its 14X9 
printed page, was put forth on January 1,1831, 
without a subscriber, in borrowed type, and 
was set by the partners (in hours snatched from 



70 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON 

journeyman's work, by which they got their 
living), worked off on the press and mailed 
by them. They were determined, as they an- 
nounced, to print the paper as long as they 
could subsist upon bread and water, or their 
hands obtain employment. The office was in 
Merchants' Hall, on the northeast corner of 
Congress and Water Streets, was bare and 
dingy, and served as a lodging for Garrison 
and Knapp. The motto of the " Liberator " 
was Mr. Garrison's own : " Our Country is 
the World, Our Countrymen are Mankind." ' 
His salutatory read as follows : — 

TO THE PUBLIC 

In the month of August I issued proposals for 
publishing the " Liberator " in Washington city ; 
but the enterprise, though hailed in different sections 
of the country, was palsied by public indifference. 
Since that time, the removal of the " Genius of Uni- 
versal Emancipation " to the Seat of Government 
has rendered less imperious the establishment of a 
similar periodical in that quarter. 

During my recent tour for the purpose of exciting 
the minds of the people by a series of discourses 

' Subsequently modified into <* My Country is the World, 
My Countrymen are all Mankind," as it appears on the ped- 
estal of the statue on Commonwealth Avenue, Boston. 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 71 

on the subject of slavery, every place that I visited 
gave fresh evidence of the fact, that a greater revo- 
lution in public sentiment was to be effected in the 
free States — and particularly in New England — 
than at the South. I found contempt more bitter, 
opposition more active, detraction more relentless, 
prejudice more stubborn, and apathy more frozen, 
than among slave-owners themselves. Of course, 
there were individual exceptions to the contrary. This 
state of things afflicted, but did not dishearten me. I 
determined, at every hazard, to lift up the standard of 
emancipation in the eyes of the nation, within sight 
of Bunker Hill and in the birthplace of liberty. That 
standard is now unfurled; and long may it float, 
unhurt by the spoliations of time or the missiles of a 
desperate foe — yea, till every chain be broken, and 
every bondman set free ! Let Southern oppressors 
tremble — let their secret abettors tremble — let their 
Northern apologists tremble — let all the enemies of 
the persecuted blacks tremble. 

I deem the publication of my original Prospectus 
unnecessary, as it has obtained a wide circulation. 
The principles therein inculcated will be steadily pur- 
sued in this paper, excepting that I shall not array 
myself as the political partisan of any man. In de- 
fending the great cause of human rights, I wish to 
derive the assistance of all religions and of all parties. 

Assenting to the " self-evident truth " maintained 
in the American Declaration of Independence, " that 



72 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON 

all men are created equal, and endowed by their 
Creator with certain inalienable rights — among 
which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," 
I shall strenuously contend for the immediate en- 
franchisement of our slave population. In Park Street 
Church, on the Fourth of July, 1829, in an address 
on slavery, I unreflectingly assented to the popular 
but pernicious doctrine of ^r^<^a<^/ abolition. I seize 
this opportunity to make a full and unequivocal re- 
cantation, and thus publicly to ask pardon of my 
God, of my country, and of my brethren, the poor 
slaves, for having uttered a sentiment so full of 
timidity, injustice, and absurdity. A similar recanta- 
tion, from my pen, was published in the " Genius 
of Universal Emancipation," at Baltimore, in Septem- 
ber, 1829. My conscience is now satisfied. 

I am aware that many object to the severity of 
my language ; but is there not cause for severity ? 
I will be as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising 
as justice. On this subject, I do not wish to think, 
or speak, or write, with moderation. No ! no ! Tell 
a man whose house is on fire to give a moderate 
alarm ; tell him to moderately rescue his wife from 
the hands of the ravisher ; tell the mother to gradu- 
ally extricate her babe from the fire into which it 
has fallen, — but urge me not to use moderation in a 
cause like the present. I am in earnest — I will not 
equivocate — I will not excuse — I will not retreat 
a single inch — and I will be heard. The apathy 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 73 

of the people is enough to make every statue leap from 
its pedestal, and to hasten the resurrection of the dead. 
It is pretended that I am retarding the cause of 
emancipation by the coarseness of my invective and 
the precipitancy of my measures. The charge is not 
true. On this question my influence, — humble as 
it is, — is felt at this moment to a considerable extent, 
and shall be felt in coming years — not perniciously, 
but beneficially — not as a curse, but as a blessing; 
and posterity will bear testimony that I was right. I 
desire to thank God, that he enables me to disregard 
" the fear of man which bringeth a snare," and to 
speak his truth in its simplicity and power. And here 
I close with this fresh dedication : — 

Oppression ! I have seen thee face to face. 

And met thy cruel eye and cloudy brow ; 

But thy soul-withering glance I fear not now — 

For dread to prouder feelings doth give place 

Of deep abhorrence ! Scorning the disgrace 

Of slavish knees that at thy footstool bow, 

I also kneel — but with far other vow 

Do hail thee and thy herd of hirelings base : — 

I swear, while life-blood warms my throbbing veins. 

Still to oppose and thwart, with heart and hand. 

Thy brutalizing sway — till Afric's chains 

Are burst, and Freedom rules the rescued land, — 

Trampling Oppression and his iron rod : 

Such is the vow I take — so help me God ! 

William Lloyd Garrison. 
Boston, January i, 1831. 



74 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON 

Language like this, and a pictorial heading 
(adopted in the seventeenth number) which 
showed a slave auction in Washington, — 
negroes and horses being sold promiscuously 
from the same block, — made the " Libera- 
tor " a very alarming paper for Southern cir- 
culation, whether by chance or otherwise. Mr. 
Garrison distinctly avowed, nevertheless, a 
purely moral and pacific warfare, addressed 
not to the violent passions of slaves stimu- 
lated to revolt, but to the consciences of the 
masters, and especially of the citizens of the 
free States, involved under the Constitution 
in the guilt of slavery. But the South took no 
notice of such distinctions, and called upon 
the North to suppress the " Liberator " and 
its editor, as promoting slave insurrections. 
Menaces were freely sent him through the 
mails ; his extradition was sought on the in- 
dictment of Southern grand juries ; the Gov- 
ernor of South Carolina sent to the Legislature 
copies of the " Liberator ** and of an address 
to the free people of color, delivered by Mr. 
Garrison in June in many cities of the North, 
and reported that the constituted authorities 
of Boston had declared their inabihty to in- 
terfere with the paper or the agitation. Har- 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 75 

rison Gray Otis, the then Mayor, had, at the 
request of ex-Senator Hayne, ferreted out the 
office of the " Liberator," through his police, 
who described it as " an obscure hole," con- 
taining the editor and a negro boy, " his only 
visible auxiliary," while his supporters were 
" a very few insignificant persons of all colors." 
The Nat Turner insurrection in Virginia, in 
August, 1 83 1, terrified the South beyond 
measure, and led to numberless precautions to 
keep out the new " incendiary " literature. In 
December the Legislature of Georgia offered 
a reward of ^5000 for the apprehension and 
conviction of the editor or publisher of the 
" Liberator " — a direct incentive to kidnap- 
ing. 

The " Liberator," however, had taken root, 
thanks to the generosity of a handful of new- 
made friends, who supplied its deficit and 
enabled the editor to make an occasional 
journey in behalf of the cause. Garrison's next 
care was to organize societies upon the prin- 
ciple of immediate emancipation, and to make 
a beginning in Boston. This seemed hazard- 
ous, even to those who were sustaining the 
" Liberator," and it was with the utmost dif- 
ficulty that twelve men were found ready to 



76 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON 

form a New England (afterwards the Massa- 
chusetts) Anti-Slavery Society. This vital 
event took place in the colored church on 
Belknap (now Joy) Street, in January, 1832, 
and out of it grew, in a few years, a host of 
similar organizations all over the free States. 
The work of agitation by tracts and public 
addresses was now systematically begun, Mr. 
Garrison himself being among the first to 
take the field as a lecturing agent of the new 
society. But his principal task this year was 
an elaborate exposure of the Colonization So- 
ciety, in a thick pamphlet, entitled " Thoughts 
on African Colonization," and mainly com- 
posed of extracts from the Society's official 
reports and speeches. For the means to issue 
this, Mr. Garrison was especially indebted to 
Arthur Tappan, and to Isaac Winslow of 
Portland. The work produced a profound 
impression, for it struck at a pseudo-charity 
which stood in high favor with the churches 
and regularly levied upon them for its revenue. 
It opened the eyes of hundreds of well-mean- 
ing and influential men, sincerely opposed to 
slavery, whose consciences the Society had 
lulled, and drew them irresistibly to the side 
of Mr. Garrison. It stimulated debate in the 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH ^^ 

theological societies, and caused disruption in 
some. The general result was to cripple and 
discredit the Colonization Society, and to re- 
move it out of the way of the genuine move- 
ment against slavery. Garrison rightly regarded 
this as the first step towards emancipation ; 
and, in fact, wherever the Society held its 
adherents most tenaciously, there the aboli- 
tionists encountered either the greatest apathy 
or the greatest resistance. 

One of the colonization strongholds was 
New Haven, and in September, 1831, a town 
meeting, called by the mayor and aldermen 
with the support of all the leading citizens, 
excitedly pledged the city to resist any attempt 
to establish there a Manual-Labor College for 
colored youth, as had been contemplated by 
the Rev. S. S. Jocelyn and Arthur Tappan, 
of course with Mr. Garrison's cordial approval. 
The project was not given over after the re- 
buff at New Haven, and it was resolved to 
send Mr. Garrison to England to raise addi- 
tional funds for it. It was also desirable that, 
being there, he should head off Elliott Cres- 
son, a Quaker emissary of the Colonization 
Society, engaged in raising money by misre- 
presenting the attitude of that body towards 



78 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON 

slavery. Strenuous efforts were made by its 
agents to detain and arrest Mr. Garrison, and 
he had even to elude supposed Southern kid- 
nappers on behalf of Georgia ; but he suc- 
ceeded in sailing in May, 1833, and landed 
safely in England. 

Here he was very cordially received by 
James Cropper and the other leading English 
abolitionists, who were just achieving the pas- 
sage of the act of West India Emancipation 
through Parliament. He had interviews with 
Wilberforce, Clarkson (whom Cresson had 
hoodwinked), and Buxton (who had supposed 
Mr. Garrison a black man, because of the fer- 
vor with which he had advocated a cause not 
his own), and secured the friendship of Daniel 
O'Connell. He was advised that nothing 
could be done at that time for the Manual- 
Labor school, and he devoted all his energies 
to the discomfiture of Cresson, who refused 
to meet him in debate, and whom he showed 
up in great meetings in Exeter Hall and in 
other places. This done, and having taken 
part in the public burial of Wilberforce in 
Westminster Abbey, he returned to America. 

His arrival in New York was the signal for 
a mob, incited by the colonization and pro- 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 79 

slavery press, using as a pretext his denun- 
ciation abroad of his country's guilt in slave- 
holding. The rioters vented themselves on the 
New York City Anti-Slavery Society, which 
happened just then to be forming, and Mr. 
Garrison moved among them as an eye-wit- 
ness, unknown and unmolested. In Boston 
a similar reception was prepared for him by 
placards ; but his adopted city was not yet 
ripe for violence towards him. 

In December, 1833, the anti-slavery or- 
ganization was completed by the formation 
at Philadelphia of an American Anti-Slavery 
Society, composed of delegates from nearly all 
the free States. Mr. Garrison was given the 
task of drawing up the Declaration of Senti- 
ments, which placed the agitation on a non- 
resistant basis ; that is, it counseled submission 
on the part of the slave until his deliverance 
should be wrought by moral instrumentalities. 
Comparing the abolitionists with the Revolu- 
tionary fathers, it said : — 

Their principles led them to wage war against 
their oppressors, and to spill human blood like water, 
in order to be free. Ours forbid the doing of evil 
that good may come, and lead us to reject, and to 
entreat the oppressed to reject, the use of all carnal 



8o WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON 

weapons for deliverance from bondage ; relying solely 
upon those which are spiritual, and mighty through 
God to the pulling down of strongholds. 

Their measures were physical resistance, the mar- 
shaling in arms, the hostile array, the mortal en- 
counter. Ours shall be such only as the opposition 
of moral purity to moral corruption, the destruction 
of error by the potency of truth, the overthrow of 
prejudice by the power of love, and the abolition of 
slavery by the spirit of repentance. 

In regard to the legal scope of the agitation 
the Declaration had these passages : — 

We fully and unanimously recognize the sove- 
reignty of each State to legislate exclusively on the 
subject of the slavery which is tolerated within its 
limits ; we concede that Congress, under the present 
national compact^ has no right to interfere with any of 
the slave States in relation to this momentous sub- 
ject : 

But we maintain that Congress has a right, and 
is solemnly bound, to suppress the domestic slave- 
trade between the several States, and to abolish sla- 
very in those portions of our territory which the 
Constitution has placed under its exclusive juris- 
diction. 

We also maintain that there are, at the present time, 
the highest obligations resting upon the people of the 
free States to remove slavery by moral and political 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 8i 

action, as prescribed in the Constitution of the Uni- 
ted States. They are now living under a pledge of 
their tremendous physical force to fasten the gall- 
ing fetters of tyranny upon the limbs of millions in 
the Southern States ; they are liable to be called at 
any moment to suppress a general insurrection of 
the slaves ; they authorize the slave-owner to vote 
for three-fifths of his slaves as property, and thus en- 
able him to perpetuate his oppression ; they support a 
standing army at the South for its protection ; and 
they seize the slave who has escaped into their ter- 
ritories, and send him back to be tortured by an en- 
raged master or a brutal driver. 

This relation to slavery is criminal, and full of 
danger ; it must be broken up. 

The officers of the American Society had 
their headquarters in New York, and exhib- 
ited remarkable activity in multiplying and 
circulating anti-slavery documents of every 
description. 

Mr. Garrison was married in September, 
1834, to Helen Eliza Benson, daughter of 
George Benson, a venerable philanthropist, 
one of the Rhode Island abolitionists of the 
previous century, then living in Brooklyn, 
Conn. A few weeks afterwards they had for 
their guest, in Roxbury, George Thompson, 
an Englishman of his own age and station 



82 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON 

whom Mr. Garrison had met while abroad. 
He was an orator of unsurpassed eloquence, 
who had rendered the greatest services in 
creating the popular demand for West India 
emancipation. Mr. Garrison, desiring to make 
use of such talents in the kindred cause on 
this side of the water, had invited him to come 
over, which he did, bringing his family with 
him. His arguments and methods were pre- 
cisely those of the American abolitionists, — 
drawn on the one hand from the Bible, on 
the other from the Declaration of Independ- 
ence. He, too, abhorred insurrection as a 
means of freedom. Nevertheless, the fact that 
he was a foreigner, and that slavery was a 
great political question in the United States, 
roused public indignation against him, and 
led to mobs in many parts of New England, 
where his labors first began. However, in 
other places he was well received, speaking 
from many pulpits, and he was of the greatest 
assistance in causing new societies to be formed, 
and the " Liberator " (which was in desperate 
straits) to be sustained. 

Thompson's appearance, and the renewed 
evidence of the strength of the abolition or- 
ganization, thoroughly alarmed the South, and 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 83 

provoked meetings in which the North was 
solemnly entreated to arrest the bloodthirsty- 
wretches who were planning a new San Do- 
mingo on American soil, with the aid of for- 
eign interlopers. Documents from the New 
York anti-slavery press, though never ad- 
dressed to the slaves, were found in the South- 
ern mails ; and in Charleston, on July 29, 
1835, ^^^ post-office was broken open, the 
mails overhauled, and the obnoxious tracts 
and periodicals burnt in a bonfire, together 
with effigies of Tappan and Garrison. A 
meeting of the citizens of Richmond, shortly 
afterward, on August 4, made a fresh appeal 
against the Northern fanatics, and touched the 
sympathy of the respectable classes of Boston. 
These, headed by the Mayor, Theodore Ly- 
man, Jr., held in Faneuil Hall, on August 
21, a great meeting, which had been called by 
fifteen hundred citizens, largely of the mercan- 
tile class, who saw their trade with the South 
imperiled. The principal speeches were made 
by Peleg (afterwards Judge) Sprague, and by 
Harrison Gray Otis, who never spoke in pub- 
lic again. Their remarks were highly condem- 
natory of those who were (as they alleged) using 
Boston as a basis of attack on the peace and 



84 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON 

security of the South, and Mr. Sprague's were 
especially directed against George Thompson 
as a foreign emissary and professed agitator. 

Great numbers of Southerners had gath- 
ered to attend the meeting, and the feeling of 
the citizens generally was such that Mr. Gar- 
rison prudently withdrew to Brooklyn, Conn., 
from which place he sent trenchant reviews 
of the Faneuil Hall speeches to the " Libera- 
tor." When he returned, calm had apparently 
been restored ; but, on the announcement that 
Thompson would address an anniversary meet- 
ing of the Boston Female Anti-Slavery So- 
ciety, the mob spirit fiercely revived, and its 
vengeance fell by proxy upon the editor of the 
" Liberator." The details of the riot on Octo- 
ber 21, 1835, ^y "gentlemen of property and 
standing," must be sought in the " Life of 
Garrison by his Children," and in Colonel 
Lyman's pamphlet on the Garrison Mob. 
The victim was advised by Mayor Lyman to 
leave the anti-slavery office (on Washington 
Street, below State Street), in which he could 
not be protected ; was discovered and seized 
by the mob on Wilson's Lane (now Devon- 
shire Street), roughly handled, and marched 
with a rope about his body past the lower end 



' BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 85 

of the Old State House (then the City Hall), 
the plan being to take him to the Common 
and tar and feather him. By great exertion 
the Mayor and his aids got Mr. Garrison into 
the building through the south door, and 
presently, by a ruse, took him from the north 
door into a carriage in waiting, and drove him 
to the city jail, on Leverett Street. This was 
a most perilous undertaking, and barely suc- 
ceeded ; for the mob endeavored to overturn 
the carriage and to cut the traces, and pur- 
sued hotly up to the very doors of the jail, 
where Mr. Garrison, whose demeanor had 
been perfectly calm and self-possessed, was 
committed as a rioter, and passed a tranquil 
night, though with a natural anxiety on account 
of his wife. The next day, by request of the 
authorities, he secretly left the city, in which 
the mob had produced the usual number of 
converts to the doctrines they were striving to 
suppress ; but Thompson was obliged to flee 
the country. 

The reign of terror, of which this was a 
single incident, reached its climax in 1837, 
when the Rev. Elijah P. Lovejoy was mobbed 
to death in Alton, 111., for editing an anti- 
slavery newspaper. Mr. Garrison himself was 



86 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON 

never afterwards personally attacked, though 
often, in common with his colleagues, in ex- 
treme danger, as at the burning of Pennsyl- 
vania Hall, in Philadelphia, in 1838. His 
measured language, his shining purity of mo- 
tive, his moral earnestness, were all calculated 
to convince, rather than to excite the spirit 
of violence. In the period which followed 
the Boston mob, his contention was more im- 
mediately with his own abolition household. 
Seeds of dissension had here been sown by 
clergymen to whom Mr. Garrison's " harsh 
language " and controlling influence were irk- 
some, and who, at length, joined in a Clerical 
Appeal against the conduct of the " Libera- 
tor," while it was temporarily in the hands of 
his friend Oliver Johnson (one of the founders 
of the New England Anti-Slavery Society). 
The controversy gradually involved Mr. Garri- 
son's views upon the Sabbath (which were sub- 
stantially those held by the Quakers), and upon 
the nature of human governments as tested 
by the requirements of Christianity ; he hold- 
ing that, as they were all based on violence, 
they were opposed to the spirit of the Gospel, 
and must ultimately be superseded. These 
views were censured as if they were identical 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH S/ 

with the doctrine of our latter-day dynamite 
anarchists; and, in spite of their irrelevancy to 
Mr. Garrison's abolitionism, were made the 
ground of an attempt to depose him from the 
anti-slavery leadership, to put the agitation in 
the hands of the Orthodox clergy, and to set 
up a sectarian organ which should leave no 
room for the " Liberator." The new organ 
was actually founded; but a new and rival 
Massachusetts Abolition Society, under cler- 
ical auspices, had to be created at the same 
time, which must have had a brief existence 
but for its gaining the sympathy of the Ex- 
ecutive Committee of the American Anti- 
Slavery Society at New York. 

In May, 1 840, a breach was effected in the 
ranks of the abolitionists at large by the dif- 
ferences between this Executive Committee 
and the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, 
or, in other words, Mr. Garrison and his 
friends. The causes which led up to it were 
complex. In brief, it was a trial of strength 
between those who held that the only test of 
abolitionism was adherence to the doctrine of 
immediatism, and those who maintained that 
orthodoxy was equally a test; between those 
who, like Mr. 'Garrison, insisted on the right 



88 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON 

of women to take part, on an equal footing 
with men, in the proceedings and direction of 
anti-slavery meetings and societies, and those 
who denied this right, as being unscriptural 
and subversive of the natural subordination 
of the sexes ; finally, between those who de- 
clared that every abolitionist ought to vote at 
the polls, and for an anti-slavery candidate, 
and those who, with Mr. Garrison, regarded 
voting as an instrumentality within the option 
of every abolitionist, according to his con- 
science. 

The woman question was the ostensible 
cause of the division which resulted in the 
formation of a nominal American and Foreign 
Anti-Slavery Society, and the retirement of 
the old Executive Committee into the ranks 
of the opposition. It had grown out of the 
public anti-slavery lecturing of the sisters 
Grimke (natives of South Carolina) in New 
England, at first to women, and afterwards 
to mixed audiences. The clerical and sectarian 
opposition to this (as it seemed) shocking pro- 
cedure was revived by the lecturing, in like 
manner, of Miss Abby Kelley, of Massachu- 
setts ; and it was her nomination to a com- 
mittee of the American Anti-Slavery Society 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 89 

in session at New York, In May, 1840, which 
determined the secession, and left the Garri- 
sonlans the masters of the situation. 

In the meantime a World's Convention 
had been called In London, by the British 
and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, and both 
wings of the abolitionists sent over delegates. 
Mr. Garrison was one from the old organiza- 
tion, and with him were appointed Lucretia 
Mott and several other women delegates. 
The managers had been coached by the se- 
ceders on this side, and were more than ready 
(under sectarian Influence) to refuse the ad- 
mission of women to seats In the Convention. 
Mr. Garrison, whose voyage was belated, found 
them. In fact, excluded on his arrival out. In 
June, 1840, and he refused, himself, to take a 
seat while his co-delegates were shut out. He 
accordingly sat In the gallery, and rejected all 
overtures to take a place on the floor or to 
address the Convention. 

Already, before his departure for England, 
the seceders, in default of capturing and con- 
verting the existing anti-slavery machinery, 
which Mr. Garrison had strenuously resisted, 
had formed a national political anti-slavery 
organization called the Liberty party. Their 



90 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON 

nominee for President was James G. Birney, 
lately Corresponding Secretary of the Ameri- 
can Anti-Slavery Society, before the schism ; 
and their doctrine was, that no one should 
remain in the abolition ranks who did not go 
to the polls and vote. This had the awkward- 
ness of applying to the original abolitionist 
himself, whose influence was especially depre- 
cated by the seceders, because he had openly 
embraced the doctrine of non-resistance for 
himself, though he did not impose or seek 
to impose it as an anti-slavery test. He had, 
in September, 1838, founded, in Boston, the 
Non-Resistance Society, with the aid of Ed- 
mund Quincy, Maria W. Chapman, and oth- 
ers, and composed the Declaration of Sen- 
timents : — 

" We register our testimony," it said, " not only 
against all wars, whether offensive or defensive, but 
all preparations for war, against every naval ship, 
every arsenal, every fortification ; against the militia 
system and a standing army ; against all military 
chieftains and soldiers ; against all monuments com- 
memorative of victory over a fallen foe, all trophies 
won in battle ; all celebrations in honor of military 
or naval exploits ; against all appropriations for the 
defence of a nation by force and arms, on the part 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 91 

of any legislative body ; against every edict of gov- 
ernment requiring of its subjects military service. 
Hence, we deem it unlawful to bear arms, or to hold 
a military office. 

" As every human government is upheld by physi- 
cal strength, and its laws are enforced virtually at 
the point of the bayonet, we cannot hold any office 
which imposes upon its incumbent the obligation to 
compel men to do right, on pain of imprisonment 
or death. We therefore voluntarily exclude ourselves 
from every legislative and judicial body, and repudiate 
all human politics, worldly honors, and stations of 
authority. If we cannot occupy a seat in the legis- 
lature or on the bench, neither can we elect others to 
act as our substitutes in any such capacity. 

" It follows, that we cannot sue any man at law, 
to compel him by force to restore anything which 
he may have wrongfully taken from us or others ; 
but, if he has seized our coat, we shall surrender 
up our cloak, rather than subject him to punish- 
ment. . . . 

" We advocate no Jacobinical doctrines. The 
spirit of jacobinism is the spirit of retaliation, vio- 
lence, and murder. It neither fears God nor regards 
man. We would be filled with the spirit of Christ. 
If we abide by our principles, it is impossible for us 
to be disorderly, or plot treason, or participate in 
any evil work ; we shall submit to every ordinance 
of man, for the Lord's sake ; obey all the require- 



92 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON 

ments of government, except such as we deem con- 
trary to the demands of the gospel ; and in no case 
resist the operation of law, except by meekly sub- 
mitting to the penalty of disobedience." 

" It appears to us a self-evident truth,** con- 
tinued the same document, " that whatever 
the gospel is designed to destroy at any period 
of the world, being contrary to it, ought now 
to be abandoned.*' This was the keynote of 
Mr. Garrison's conduct of life, so far as the 
individual was concerned. If slavery was sin- 
ful, the duty of the slaveholder to let his vic- 
tim go free was instant and immediate, not 
remote ; the duty of his accomplice not other- 
wise. If the fulfillment of Christianity was 
to be peace on earth and good will to man, 
Christians had no excuse for prolonging for a 
single hour the reign of violence. The law of 
Christianity was for Mr. Garrison the law of 
suffering, and this seemed to him one of the 
plainest teachings of the New Testament. 
Those who held with him to this Bible doc- 
trine were a mere handful, — not, as might 
have been expected, the whole Quaker denom- 
ination ; not a large portion of the aboli- 
tionists. Of the majority the lives might be 
as blameless as his, but they hesitated to fol- 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 93 

low out the doctrine to its consequences as 
indicated in the passages quoted above. They 
hesitated to become " no-government " men, 
as the non-resistants were called because they 
were content to suffer and neither to rule by 
force nor to punish their fellow-men. Down 
to 1 840 a very small number of abolitionists 
who, in the sectarian division, adhered to the 
old organization, abstained from voting in 
view of the fact that the United States gov- 
ernment rested upon an army and navy, on 
penal codes, jails, and gallowses. 

Soon after this date, however, it became 
clear to Mr. Garrison that there was no hope 
of abolishing slavery under the Constitution 
and the Union as they had been formed in 
1787. As early as March, 1840, he had an- 
nounced the " irrepressible conflict " in these 
terms : " that Freedom and Slavery are natu- 
ral and irreconcilable enemies ; that it is morally 
impossible for them to endure together in the 
same nation ; and that the existence of the 
one can only be secured by the destruction of 
the other." The South was in the habit of 
threatening to dissolve the Union whenever 
her " peculiar institution " was challenged, or 
her plans for its extension resisted. Mr. Gar- 



94 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON 

rlson proposed the same measure as the only 
way in which the North could protect its own 
liberties, and rid itself of responsibility for 
slavery. His cry henceforth became " No 
Union with Slaveholders!" and in 1844 he 
succeeded in bringing over the whole body of 
abolitionists, strictly so called, to this stand- 
ard. Thenceforth none of them would either 
vote or hold office, or take, or permit any one 
to take for them, the oath of allegiance to a 
Constitution which recognized and supported 
slavery in the States. This was the last evi- 
dence of that disinterestedness which Mr. 
Garrison refused to forfeit by joining an anti- 
slavery political party. It was to the Slave 
Power a declaration of war to extremities, and 
it brought down on the abolitionists the charge 
of treason as well as of " incendiarism.'* 

Mr. Garrison's history for the next twenty 
years is that of unflinching adhesion to this 
line of assault, which many Northern states- 
men were ready to justify in case Texas should 
be annexed — as it was ; and which the Mexi- 
can war, the Compromise of 1850 and new 
Fugitive Slave Law, and the repeal of the 
Missouri Compromise in the case of Kansas 
and Nebraska, all favored, by making clear to 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 95 

every one the irresistible control of the Gov- 
ernment by the slave-system entrenched in 
the Constitution. The civil war, precipitated 
by John Brown and the election of Abraham 
Lincoln, ended in the destruction of the Con- 
stitution and the Union as they had been, and 
in the preservation of a Constitution and a 
Union with which Mr. Garrison (as an aboli- 
tionist) had no quarrel. He promptly espoused 
the cause of the North on the outbreak of 
secession, never doubting the constitutional 
right of the Federal Government to make 
its authority respected over all the country 
against any armed rebellion whatsoever. He 
never despaired of the issue of the conflict 
being the downfall of slavery, and the Govern- 
ment gave him the crowning delight of his life 
when it invited him (with his friend George 
Thompson) to attend the raising of the national 
flag over Sumter on the fourth anniversary 
of the capture of that fort. He received at 
Charleston the most touching manifestations 
of gratitude from the colored people, who 
loaded him with flowers. Before he reached 
home Lincoln had been assassinated. 

The " Liberator,'* in spite of its precarious 
support, had survived to the very end of sla- 



96 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON 

very In America. In December, 1865, the last 
number of the thirty-fifth volume was pub- 
lished, and Mr. Garrison's occupation as an 
abolitionist was gone. He had already, in May, 
withdrawn from the American Anti-Slavery 
Society, of which he had been president for 
more than twenty years, though some of his 
colleagues thought this action premature, and 
endeavored to prolong the organization and 
the agitation. Mr. Garrison had no desire to 
continue a role which had lost its meaning. 
Slavery was dead beyond recovery, and there 
was no longer need of abolition societies. The 
freedmen, however, claimed his warmest sym- 
pathy. He was made an officer of local and 
national freedmen's aid societies, and, both as 
a lecturer and a writer for the press, he un- 
ceasingly entreated justice and charitable help 
for the blacks. He thus alleviated, as far as he 
could, the change in their condition, brought 
about, not as he would have had it, peacefully 
and with careful safeguards of education, but 
violently and with unprepared enfranchise- 
ment. 

Other causes, too, received his attention and 
active assistance, as they had always done, — 
the woman's-rights agitation before all. From 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 97 

defending the equal right of women in philan- 
thropy, he early grew to acknowledge It In citi- 
zenship. He recognized no division of human 
interests between them and men, no natural 
power of one sex over the other, no Incapacity 
in either for perfectibility. Hence he wished 
to see women admitted to all callings and all 
professions to which they applied for entrance, 
and to the full responsibilities and privileges 
of citizenship. His action in their behalf,at the 
World's Convention in 1840, Is generally re- 
garded as the prime landmark in the woman's- 
rights agitation, which in the next decade as- 
sumed a definite form, and continues to this 
day. 

Mr. Garrison had crossed the ocean, on a 
third anti-slavery mission, in 1846. A fourth 
was made in 1867, ^^ delegate of the American 
Freedmen's Commission to the Paris Anti- 
Slavery Conference. On the way to that capi- 
tal he gladdened his numerous friends in 
England by revisiting them, no longer as the 
leader of an almost hopeless cause, but as a 
retired reformer, well satisfied to have ceased 
from his labors, of which he had lived to see 
the astonishing triumph. He appeared, too, 
not as the representative of a party, but, as the 



98 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON 

Duke of Argyll said (at a public breakfast 
given in London to Mr. Garrison), in a na- 
tional and even international capacity : " Free- 
dom is now the policy of the Government and 
the assured policy of the country, and we can 
to-day accept and welcome Mr. Garrison, not 
merely as the liberator of the slaves, but as the 
representative, also, of the American Govern- 
ment." This idea was repeated and empha- 
sized on the same occasion by Earl Russell, 
who improved the opportunity to make open 
amends to the United States for his attitude 
during the Rebellion, by which the "Alabama" 
was allowed to leave British ports to prey upon 
American commerce. " Let us hope," he said, 
" that the friendship of the United States and 
the United Kingdom of Great Britain and 
Ireland may endure unbroken, and that Mr. 
Garrison may carry with him, amongst other 
gratifications, this reflection, that our meeting 
here to-day has tended to the better union of 
two races who ought never to be separated." 
John Bright, who presided at the breakfast, 
referring to the late civil war, asked : — 

May we not say, reviewing what has taken place, 
— and I have only glanced in the briefest possible 
way at the chief aspects of this great question, — 



•BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 99 

that probably history has no sadder, and yet, if we 
take a different view, I may say, also, probably no 
brighter page. To Mr. Garrison more than to any 
other man this is due : his is the creation of that opin- 
ion which has made slavery hateful, and which has 
made freedom possible in America. His name is ven- 
erated in his own country, — venerated where not long 
ago it was a name of obloquy and reproach. His name 
is venerated in this country and in Europe wheresoever 
Christianity softens the hearts and lessens the sor- 
rows of men ; and I venture to say that in time to 
come, near or remote I know not, his name will be- 
come the herald and the synonym of good to millions 
of men who will dwell on the now almost unknown 
continent of Africa. 

Finally, John Stuart Mill pointed out two 
lessons from Mr. Garrison's career : — 

The first lesson is : Aim at something great; aim 
at things which are difficult (and there is no great 
thing which is not difficult). Do not pare down your 
undertaking to what you can hope to see successful 
in the next few years, or in the years of your own 
life. . . . 

The other lesson which it appears to me important 
to enforce, amongst the many that may be drawn 
from our friend's life, is this : If you aim at some- 
thing noble, and succeed in it, you will generally find 
that you have succeeded not in that alone. A hundred 

iuOf C. 



loo WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON 

other good and noble things which you never dreamed 
of will have been accomplished by the way, and the 
more certainly, the sharper and more agonizing has 
been the struggle which preceded the victory. The 
heart and mind of a nation are never stirred from 
their foundation without manifold good fruits. In the 
case of the great American contest these fruits have 
been already great, and are daily becoming greater. 
The prejudices which beset every form of society — 
and of which there was a plentiful crop in America 
— are rapidly melting away. The chains of prescrip- 
tion have been broken j it is not only the slave who 
has been freed, — the mind of America has been 
emancipated. The whole intellect of the country has 
been set thinking about the fundamental questions 
of society and government ; and the new problems 
which have to be solved, and the new difficulties 
which have to be encountered, are calling forth new 
activity of thought, and that great nation is saved, 
probably for a long time to come, from the most for- 
midable danger of a completely settled state of society 
and opinion, — intellectual and moral stagnation. 
This, then, is an additional item of the debt which 
America and mankind owe to Mr. Garrison and his 
noble associates; and it is well calculated to deepen 
our sense of the truth which his whole career most 
strikingly illustrates, — that though our best-directed 
efforts may often seem wasted and lost, nothing 
coming of them that can be pointed to and distinctly 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH loi 

identified as a definite gain to humanity ; though this 
may happen ninety-nine times in every hundred, 
the hundredth time the result may be so great and 
dazzling that we had never dared to hope for it, and 
should have regarded him who had predicted it to us 
as sanguine beyond the bounds of mental sanity. So 
has it been with Mr. Garrison. 

These marks of approval from the most en- 
lightened and eminent Englishmen — to which 
we must add the freedom of the city of Edin- 
burgh bestowed on Mr. Garrison — should 
not outweigh the testimony to his character 
furnished by his immediate friendships at 
home. Not to go beyond the limits of Bos- 
ton: to have drawn to himself such men and 
women as Samuel E. Sewall, Ellis Gray and 
Louisa Loring, Francis Jackson, Charles and 
Eliza Lee Follen, David Lee and Lydia Maria 
Child, Wendell and Ann Greene Phillips, 
Henry Grafton and Maria Weston Chapman, 
the Misses Weston, Samuel J. May, Samuel 
and Mary May, Samuel May, Jr., Edmund 
Quincy, Henry I. and William I. Bowditch, 
Samuel and Eliza Philbrick, Joseph and 
Thankful Southwick, Charles F. Hovey, 
Theodore Parker, — to have led all these to 
share his labors and the common odium of a 



102 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON 

most unpopular cause ; to have maintained 
the respect and affection of all, is itself a mon- 
ument to his sterling worth. But for the con- 
stant pecuniary assistance of this group, neither 
the cause nor its leader could have been 
upheld in the fearful struggle. When Mr. 
Garrison terminated the publication of the 
" Liberator " he was rich only in the reward 
of a good conscience ; and, having put aside 
his sole means of gaining a livelihood, his 
condition was, in his advanced years, a matter 
of serious concern, especially as his wife had 
been crippled by paralysis. At this juncture 
a national testimonial to Mr. Garrison was 
undertaken by a committee, of which ex-Gov- 
ernor Andrew was chairman, and the Rev. 
Samuel May, of Leicester, secretary. " The 
generation," said the address to the public, 
penned by Mr. Andrew, "which immediately 
preceded ours regarded him only as a wild en- 
thusiast, a fanatic, or a public enemy. The 
present generation sees in him the bold and 
honest reformer, the man of original, self- 
poised, heroic will, inspired by a vision of uni- 
versal justice, made actual in the practice of 
nations ; who, daring to attack without reserve 
the worst and most powerful oppression of his 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 103 

country and his time, has outlived the Giant 
Wrong he assailed, and has triumphed over 
the sophistries by which it was maintained.** 
The committee, therefore, invited contribu- 
tions from "all people who rejoice in the de- 
struction of Slavery, in the reestablishment of 
the Union on the basis of Universal Freedom, 
who appreciate his past service in the cause of 
Liberty, and the dignity and judgment with 
which he has accepted and interpreted the 
more recent events of public history.** The 
fund thus raised was sufficient to keep Mr. 
Garrison in comfortable circumstances for the 
remainder of his life. He passed his days, not 
in indolence, but in lively contact with public 
affairs, writing incessantly for the press, and 
frequently speaking in public. 

In 1876 Mrs. Garrison was taken from 
him, after a union marked by the deepest and 
truest affection, fidelity, sympathy, and coop- 
eration in all benevolent works. In the follow- 
ing year he made a final visit to England, where 
his social experience was, if possible, more de- 
lightful than ever before. His infirmities, how- 
ever, had already made serious inroads on his 
bodily strength, and on May 24, 1879, while 
temporarily at the home of his daughter, Mrs. 



104 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON 

Henry Villard, in New York city, he breathed 
his last, in the seventy-fourth year of his age/ 
So passed away a man whose Hfe was a high 
exempHfication of disinterested and untiring 
benevolence, both in public and in private ; 
whose conduct as a citizen was beyond re- 
proach, whose moral behavior under all cir- 
cumstances was flawless; who abhorred injus- 
tice and loathed violence ; who never wished 
evil to any man ; who had no enemy that he 
could not and did not forgive ; whose sympa- 
thies were all-embracing, and predisposed him 
to favor every movement for the amelioration 
of mankind ; who was stern and inflexible in 
the application of principle, but habitually 

' The funeral services were held in the afternoon of May 
28, at the church of the First Religious Society, near his 
home in Roxbury. A great throng was in attendance. The 
pall-bearers were Wendell Phillips, Samuel May, Samuel E. 
Sewall, Robert F. Wallcut, Theodore D. Weld, Oliver 
Johnson, Lewis Hayden, and Charles L. Mitchell. The 
religious exercises were conducted by the Rev. Samuel 
May, and feeling remarks were made by this stanch friend 
of Mr. Garrison, and by Mrs. Lucy Stone, the Rev. Sam- 
uel Johnson, Theodore D. Weld, and Wendell Phillips. 
A poem, written for the occasion by John G. Whittier, was 
also read. At sunset the body was interred beside that of 
Mrs. Garrison, on Smilax Path, in the cemetery at Forest 
HiUs. 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 105 

modest, genial, kindly to the last degree in 
his personal intercourse with others ; of extreme 
sociability, of transparent ingenuousness, de- 
void of vanity or the smallest trace of self- 
seeking; as amenable to counsel as he was 
prompt in initiative; inexhaustible in hope- 
fulness and patience, undiscourageable, pos- 
sessed (as John Bright said) of "an unfaltering 
faith that that which is right will in the end 
succeed." The reputation which for thirty 
years he bore among his countrymen at large 
was so opposed to this reality that posterity will 
with difficulty explain the paradox. Theolo- 
gical odium was responsible for a large part of 
it, even at a time when Mr. Garrison's views 
were not different from those which are hon- 
ored or forgiven in the great leaders of the 
Protestant Reformation. His pious mother, 
to whom he owed his deeply religious nature 
and the springs of that moral earnestness 
which determined his philanthropic career, had 
brought him up a rigid Baptist, yet could not 
make him a sectarian. In the Bible which she 
placed in his hands he found an all-sufficient 
weapon against every form of iniquity. It was 
an armory upon which he drew as freely as if 
he had been a clergyman, and with a familiarity 



io6 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON 

more than professional. His most tremendous 
invectives against war, slavery, intemperance, 
were apt to be couched in Scriptural phrase- 
ology. And still he passed for an "infidel." 

The truth is that, as he went on, his views 
of the supernatural origin and sanction of the 
Bible did undergo a change. In this, as in 
other matters, his experience was like that of 
thousands of his coadjutors : his efforts to 
liberate the slave ended in enlarging his own 
spirit. This change with him, as far so the 
inspiration of the Bible was concerned, was 
extremely slow, and did not begin until long 
after his enemies had adjudged him a hopeless 
and degraded infidel. Instead of its causing 
him to reject the Bible as his daily companion 
and firmest ally, he used it all the more, with 
fresh insight into its meaning, and fresh de- 
light in its spiritual power. 

Whatever time may have done at this date 
for his religious rehabilitation, his patriotism is 
now admitted on all hands. That which pre- 
vailed when he came upon the scene was class 
patriotism, not democratic patriotism. To 
prate of country, and to be Insensible to the 
wrongs of the humblest of one's country- 
men, was not his patriotism, which rather 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 107 

began with the downtrodden, deeming (in 
Francis Jackson*s fine language) " that Whig- 
ism hypocritical, and that Democracy con- 
temptibly spurious, which profess to find dan- 
ger to liberty in a Bank or a Sub-Treasury, 
while their fellow-man is perishing in the 
chains that one blow would strike from his 
limbs." He was the first to " make a common 
rally " in the slave's behalf under the banner 
of immediate and unconditional emancipation. 
He was the first to address on terms of equal 
brotherhood the class next above the slaves 
in public contempt and legal disability — the 
free blacks. He entreated the South to save 
itself from the daily demoralization of its or- 
ganized cruelty, from the peril of bloody out- 
breaks as time went on ; he besought the 
North to refuse all partnership in the mon- 
strous crime against humanity. " I am," he 
said, " earnest for the repeal of the Union be- 
tween the North and the South, whether I 
contemplate the subject on the ground of 
patriotism or in the light of Christianity." 
He pleaded for a real, not a paper, Union; 
for homogeneous, not discordant, institutions ; 
for a Constitution free from the shocking and 
baleful inconsistency of a government, osten- 



io8 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON 

sibly established for the maintenance of equal- 
ity before the law, recognizing and sustain- 
ing, with army and navy, the chattel bondage 
of one-sixth part of the population. He held 
the end more sacred than the means, and 
could not worship an instrument or a con- 
federacy which flourished in defiance of the 
Declaration of Independence. From that De- 
claration he virtually derived his motto, " My 
Country is the World, My Countrymen are 
all Mankind," — a sentiment not inconsistent 
with the narrower patriotism which endears 
to every citizen the country of his birth. A 
thousand times was Mr. Garrison's attach- 
ment intensified when the Declaration and 
the Constitution — the real and the paper 
Union — were brought into harmony by the 
abolition of slavery; and in his own eyes he 
never did a more patriotic act than when 
he denounced that Congressional legislation 
against the Chinese which is now upon the 
statute-book. This was his last public writing. 

Mr. Garrison's own judgment of himself 
may fitly close this sketch : — 

" The truth is, he who commences any re- 
form which at last becomes one of transcend- 
ent importance and is crowned with victory, 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 109 

is always ill judged and unfairly estimated. 
At the outset he is looked upon with con- 
tempt, and treated in the most opprobrious 
manner, as a wild fanatic or a dangerous dis- 
organizer. In due time the cause grows and 
advances to its sure triumph ; and in propor- 
tion as it nears the goal, the popular estimate 
of his character changes, till finally excessive 
panegyric is substituted for outrageous abuse. 
The praise, on the one hand, and the defama- 
tion, on the other, are equally unmerited. In 
the clear light of Reason, it will be seen that 
he simply stood up to discharge a duty which 
he owed to his God, to his fellow-men, to the 
land of his nativity." 



APPENDIX 



APPENDIX 



SELECT PORTRAITS AND STATUARY 
OF GARRISON 

PAINTINGS 

1825. Oil painting from life, executed in New- 
buryport, Mass., by William Swain. 

.*. Life size. Now in possession of Francis J. 
Garrison, Lexington, Mass. Engraved on wood for 
the family Life of Garrison (vol. i, p. 56). The 
only youthful portrait (aet. 20), and the only one 
showing a full head of hair. Its essential truthful- 
ness as a likeness was established by striking resem- 
blance in a son and grandson. 

1833. ^^^ painting from life, executed at New 
Haven, Conn., by Nathaniel Jocelyn. 

.*. Life size. Begun April 10. Regarded by 
Garrison at the time as " a very tolerable likeness." 
That it was worked over is shown in details in com- 
parison with the steel engraving made from it by 
the artist's brother, Simeon S. Jocelyn (copyrighted 
April 6, 1834, in the District of Connecticut). The 
painting was much more highly approved than the 
engraving, the plate of which is now in possession of 
Francis J. Garrison. The painting was bought by 
the late Robert Purvis of Philadelphia, and subse- 
quently sold to the late Edward M. Davis of the 



114 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON 

same city, whose heirs now own it. Garrison holds 
the " Liberator " in his hand. 

1835. Oil painting from life, executed apparently 
in Boston, by M. C. Torrey. 

. • . Cabinet portrait. Sent from Boston (before 
December 30) to Philadelphia to be engraved in 
mezzotint by John Sartain. The painting passed, 
through Mrs. William Oakes of Ipswich, Mass., 
her daughter, Mrs. Stephen Caldwell of Philadelphia, 
and Mrs. Thomas Mott, to the descendants of Lu- 
cretia Mott, who now own it. A replica was painted 
for George Thompson, who took it to England. 
The engraving was published in June, 1836, and 
the plate is supposed to have been burnt in the fire 
that consumed Pennsylvania Hall (1838). For the 
family Life of Garrison, the Torrey painting was re- 
engraved on wood, with the added accuracy of having 
been photographed upon the block (see vol. i, p. i). 
This must be thought a good likeness, and was al- 
ways recognized as such, in the print, by Garrison's 
infants. It had the favorable opinion also of Mrs, 
Maria Weston Chapman, 

1840. Oil painting of the World's Anti-Slavery 
Convention of 1840, by Robert Benjamin Hay- 
don. 

. • . The sketch in crayon for Garrison's portrait, 
made by Haydon at the instance of the Duchess of 
Sutherland, is now in the possession of Fanny Gar- 
rison (Mrs. Henry) Villard. The canvas is in the 
National Gallery, London. 

1846. Oil painting from life, executed by Wil- 
liam Page. 



PORTRAITS AND STATUARY 115 

.*. Life size. Undertaken by the artist on his 
owi^ account, and sent to London in care of George 
Thompson to be exhibited (1846-7). Bought by 
the late Francis George Shaw, and given by his 
widow to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts in 1887. 
It has never been esteemed as a likeness by Garri- 
son's family. Its defects are obvious in comparison 
with the engraving from the Dublin daguerreotype 
of 1846, which forms the frontispiece to volume iii 
of the family Life. 

1867. Oil painting from life, executed in Boston 
by E. T. Billings. 

. * . Life size. Ordered for the Mechanics' Hall, 
Worcester, Mass., where it now hangs. Not very 
satisfactory. 

1871. Oil painting from life, by the same. 
. * . Life size. Now in the possession of Francis 
J. Garrison. A truly domestic portrait. 



ENGRAVINGS 

1836. Mezzotint engraving, after M. C. Torrey's 
cabinet portrait, executed in Philadelphia by John 
Sartain. 

1854. Lithographic portrait, executed in Boston 
by Louis Grozelier. 

. • . Based on a daguerreotype by Chase, but also 
having the advantage of sittings. Published by Wil- 
liam C. Nell in Boston, May 5. Autograph signa- 
ture, and motto : " I am in earnest," etc. Though 



ii6 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON 

a little hard in drawing, this likeness stands at the 
head of all the prints of Garrison as truly bodying 
forth the spirit of the resolute reformer, and it was 
universally approved by his co-workers and by his 
family. 

1889. Wood engraving, executed in East Orange, 
N. J., by GusTAV Kruell, 

. • . Based on the latter-day photograph by Rock- 
wood, of which a photogravure copy serves as fron- 
tispiece to volume iv of the family Life of Garrison. 
As a work of art, of the highest order ; as a likeness, 
variously esteemed. 



STATUARY 

1 84 1. Plaster bust, executed by S. L. V. Cleven- 

GER. 

. • . An Ohio artist, who died two years later. 
Life size. Strongly modeled, yet not satisfactory 
as a likeness. It was exhibited at the Anti-Slavery 
Bazaar held in Amory Hall, Boston, in the winter 
of 1 84 1-2. George Thompson had a copy of it in 
England in 1845. The original is in possession of 
Francis J. Garrison. 

1857. Plaster bust, executed in Boston by John 

Adams Jackson. 

. * . A Maine sculptor, who died in Florence in 
August, 1879, aged 57. Life size. Unsuccessful, 
especially in comparison with the same artist's bust 
of Wendell Phillips. Garrison's bust became the 
property of the Parker Fraternity Association of 
Boston. 



PORTRAITS AND STATUARY 117 

1869. Life mask, made by John Rogers. 

. • . This precious and fine memorial, wonder- 
fully vital in its lines and nervous muscularity, was 
quite lost sight of till brought to the notice of Olin 
L. Warner when he was modeling the Boston statue 
of Garrison. Two bronze copies made for Francis J. 
Garrison and Wendell P. Garrison are in their re- 
spective possession. The mask was used by Rogers 
as a study for the following : 

1869. Statuette group, "The Fugitive's Story," 
executed by John Rogers. 

. * . Garrison is seated at his editorial desk, around 
which are standing John G. Whittier, Henry Ward 
Beecher, and a slave mother and her infant in arms 
— a purely imaginary grouping, and beyond the range 
of probability. In spite of the aid afforded by the 
mask. Garrison's head is least successful, though care- 
fully and truthfully modeled. His face is too thin, 
and his body is stiffly posed, owing to the crowding 
of the design. 

1878. Bust, executed in Boston by Anne Whit- 
ney. 

. • . Life size, from many sittings, and an admir- 
able presentation of Mr. Garrison in advanced age. 
A marble copy, now in his possession, was made for 
Francis J. Garrison, and, later, one for Mrs. Fanny 
Garrison Villard. 

1884. Plaster statuette, executed in Boston by 
Anne Whitney. 

. • . This represents Garrison seated in a charac- 
teristic attitude, which he was wont to take when in 
animated social conversation or discussion. It was 



ii8 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON 

made for his children, who felt that the superiority 
of Miss Whitney*s model for the Boston statue, as 
well as her success with the portrait bust, entitled her 
to the commission awarded to Mr. Warner. Copies 
of it are in their possession. 

1886. Bronze statue, executed in New York by 
Olin L. Warner. 

. • . Heroic size, seated. Procured by private sub- 
scription. Erected In Commonwealth Avenue, Bos- 
ton, on May 13, 1886. Neither as a work of art nor 
as a likeness does this statue justify the sculptor's 
deservedly high reputation. The pose Is uncharacter- 
istic. The expression is not wanting in resoluteness, 
but lacks the benevolence and benignity which so 
distinguished the face of Garrison, and which are 
happily portrayed In Miss Whitney's bust.^ 

* The bronze statue, by an inexperienced local sculptor, 
erected in Newburyport, July 4, 1893, is unqualifiedly bad. 



SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY 

A Sketch of the Character and Defence of the Prin- 
ciples of William Lloyd Garrison, Being an Address, 
delivered before the Managers of the " Maine Anti- 
Slavery Society," in Portland, Me., on the evening of 
the 1st of November, 1833, by One of the Board. 
Published by request. New York : Printed by Henry 
R. Piercy, 7 Theatre Alley. 1833. 

.*. Pamphlet, pp. 15. Green paper covers, vi^ith 
imprint : Memoir of William Lloyd Garrison. The 
author was James Frederic Otis, one of the founders 
of the American Anti-Slavery Society and signers of 
the Declaration of Sentiments at Philadelphia in the 
month following the Address. (He was afterwards a 
backslider from the abolition faith, but survived 
emancipation, dying February 2, 1867.) 

The Martyr Age of the United States, By Harriet 
Martineau. 

. • . In the London and Westminster Review for 
December, 1838. Reprinted in pamphlet form. New 
York: S. W. Benedict. 1839. 

\_William Lloyd GarrisonJ] By Mary Howitt. 

.-.In the "People's Journal" for September 12, 
19,26, and October 3, 1 846 ; with a portrait on wood 
drawn by H. Anelay, and probably engraved by 
W. J. Linton. The Memoir was reprinted in the 
"Pennsylvania Freeman" for March 25, 1847. 



120 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON 

Tributes to William Lloyd Garrison at the Funeral 

Services^ May 28, 1879. Boston : Houghton, Osgood 

& Co. 1879. 

. • . The frontispiece a profile view (heHotype) of 
the portrait bust by Anne Whitney. 

JVilUam Lloyd Garrison and his Times^ etc. By 
OHver Johnson. With an introduction by John G. 
Whittier. Boston: B. B. Russell & Co. 1880. 
[1881. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co.] 

. • . The portrait, engraved on steel by F. T. 
Stuart, after a photograph (1876) by George K. 
Warren, is an admirable and genial likeness. 

JVilUam Lloyd Garrison : The Story of his Life 
told by his Children. Volumes i, 11, 1885. Vol- 
umes III, IV, 1889. New York : The Century Co. 
[1894. Boston : Houghton, Mifflin & Co.] 

. • . The documentary Life by way of eminency. 
It contains six portraits of Garrison, and many more 
of his principal coadjutors on both sides of the Atlan- 
tic ; maps, facsimiles of handwriting, etc. It is the 
quarry from which all subsequent lives have neces- 
sarily been constructed. 

A Memorial of William Lloyd Garrison from the 
City of Boston. Boston : Printed by order of the 
City Council. 1886. 

. * . The city document has for frontispiece a 
heliotype reduction of L. Grozelier's lithographic 
portrait of Garrison, and contains also a heliotype 
print of the statue of Garrison by Olin M. Warner 
set up in Commonwealth Avenue on May 13, 1886. 



SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY 121 

The biographical sketch, prepared at the request of 
the late William H. Whitmore, then a member 
of the city government, is reproduced in the present 
volume. 

An American Hero: The Story of JVm. Lloyd 
Garrison. Written for Young People. By Frances 
E. Cooke. London : Swan Sonnenschein & Co. 
1888. 

The Story of a Noble Life : William Lloyd Garri- 
son. By William E. A. Axon. (" Onward Series.*') 
London : S. W. Partridge & Co. 1890. 

TVilliam Lloyd Garrison. Von Prof. Dr. Georg 
Gizycki. (Autorisirter Auszug.) Berlin : A. Asher 
& Co. 1890. 

TVilliam Lloyd Garrison^ the Abolitionist. By Archi- 
bald H. Grimke, M. A. New York: Funk & Wag- 
nails. 1 89 1. 

The Moral Crusader^ William Lloyd Garrison : A 
Biographical Essay founded on The Story of Garri- 
son's Life told by his Children. By Goldwin Smith, 
D. C. L. Toronto : Williamson & Co. 1892. Also, 
New York : Funk & Wagnalls. 

.*. The difference between these editions is in 
the typography and the frontispiece portrait. 

A Short Biography of William Lloyd Garrison. By 
V. Tchertkoff and F. Holah. With an introductory 
Appreciation of his Life and Work by Leo Tolstoy. 
London : The Free Age Press. 1904. 



122 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON 

An Address delivered before the Free People of Color ^ 
in Philadelphia, New York, and other places during 
the month of June, 1831. By William Lloyd Gar- 
rison. Boston : Stephen Foster. 1831. 

Thoughts on African Colonization : or, An Impar- 
tial Exhibition of the Doctrines, Principles, and Pur- 
poses of the American Colonization Society. To- 
gether with the Resolutions, Addresses, and Remon- 
strances of the Free People of Color. " Out of 
thine own mouth will I condemn thee." " Prove 
all things, hold fast that which is good." By Wm. 
Lloyd Garrison. Boston : Garrison & Knapp. 1832. 

An Address on the Progress of the Abolition Cause^ de- 
livered before the African Abolition Freehold Society 
of Boston, July 16, 1832. By Wm. Lloyd Garri- 
son. Boston: Garrison & Knapp. 1832. 

Address delivered in Boston, New York, and 
Philadelphia before the Free People of Color in 
April, 1833. By William Lloyd Garrison. New 
York : Printed for the Free People of Color. 1833. 

A Brief Sketch of the Trial of William Lloyd Gar- 
rison^ for an alleged Libel on Francis Todd, of New- 
buryport, Mass. Boston : Garrison & Knapp. 
1834. 

A Selection of Anti-Slavery Hymns^ for the use of 
the Friends of Emancipation. Boston : Garrison & 
Knapp. 1834. 



SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY 123 

.*. The selection made and a preface (dated 
Boston, March i) furnished by Garrison. 

An Address in Marlboro Chapel, Boston, July 4, 
1838. By William Lloyd Garrison. Boston: Isaac 
Knapp. 1838. 

An Address delivered at the Broadway Tabernacle, 
New York, August i, 1838, by request of the 
People of Color of that city, in commemoration of 
the complete emancipation of 600,000 slaves on 
that day in the British West Indies. By William 
Lloyd Garrison. Boston : Isaac Knapp. 1838. 

A Letter on the Political Obligations of Abolitionists, 
By James G. Birney : With a Reply by William 
Lloyd Garrison. Boston: Dow & Jackson. 1839. 

An Address delivered before the Old Colony 
Anti-Slavery Society at South Scituate, Mass., July 
4, 1839. By Wm. Lloyd Garrison. Boston : Dow 
& Jackson. 1839. 

Sonnets and Other Poems. By William Lloyd Gar- 
rison. Boston : Oliver Johnson. 1843. 

Anti-Slavery Melodies : for the friends of Freedom. 
Prepared for the Hingham Anti-Slavery Society. 
Hingham [Mass.] : Elijah B. Gill. [1843.] 

.'. Set to music. The hymns 3, 18, 27, and lyrics 
on pages 64, 70, are Garrison's — the first hymn 
curiously razeed to fit the metre. 

Address on the Subject of American Slavery delivered 



124 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON 

in the National Hall, Holborn, September 2, 1846. 
By William Lloyd Garrison. London : Richard 
Kinder. 1846. 

Speeches of W'tUiam Lloyd Garrison and Frederick 
Douglass at the great Anti-Slavery Meeting held at 
Paisley, Scotland, 23d September 1846. [Glasgow?] 
Alex. Gardner. 1846. 

Selections from the Writings and Speeches of TVilliam 
Lloyd Garrison. Boston : Robert F. Wallcut. 1852. 

Letter to Louis Kossuth^ concerning Freedom and 
Slavery in the United States. [By William Lloyd 
Garrison.] Boston : R. F. Wallcut. 1852. 

Principles and Mode of Action of the American Anti- 
Slavery Society : A Speech by William Lloyd Garri- 
son. London : William Tweedie. [1853.] 

No Compromise with Slavery : An Address deliv- 
ered in New York, February 14, 1854. By William 
Lloyd Garrison. New York. 1854. 

West India Emancipation : A Speech delivered at 
Abington, Mass., on the first day of August, 1854. 
By William Lloyd Garrison. Boston. 1854. 

No Fetters in the Bay State: Speech before the 
Committee on Federal Relations [of the Massachu- 
setts Legislature], Thursday, February 24, 1859. 
By William Lloyd Garrison. Boston. 1859. 

The " Infidelity " of Abolitionism. By Wm. Lloyd 
Garrison. New York. i860. 



SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY 125 

" The New Reign of Terror.''^ New York : Amer- 
ican Anti-Slavery Society, i860. 
. • . Compiled by Garrison. 

The Abolitionists^ and their Relations to the War : 
A Lecture by William Lloyd Garrison at the Cooper 
Institute, New York, January 14, 1862. New 
York: E. D. Barker. 1862. 

Proceedings at the Public Breakfast held in honor of 
William Lloyd Garrison^ Esq..^ of Boston, Massa- 
chusetts, in St. James's Hall, London, on Saturday, 
June 29th, 1867. London: William Tweedie. 
1868. 

foseph Mazzini : His Life, Writings, and Politi- 
cal Principles. With an Introduction by William 
Lloyd Garrison. New York : Hurd & Houghton. 
1872. 

Helen Eliza Garrison : A Memorial. [By Wil- 
liam Lloyd Garrison.] Cambridge [Mass.] : Printed 
at the Riverside Press. 1876. 



CHRONOLOGY OF GARRISON 

1805, December 10. Born in Newburyport, Mass., 
on School Street, immediately behind the First 
Presbyterian Church. The house has been 
preserved, with internal alterations. It is now 
a double house. 

1 8 14. Apprenticed to Gamaliel W. Oliver, shoe- 
maker, in Lynn, Mass. 

18 15. October. Removes, by sea, with his mother, 
to Baltimore, Md. 

1816. Returns, about midyear, to Newburyport, 
living on the corner of Water and Summer 
Streets. 

18 1 8 (probably). Apprenticed to Moses Short, cabi- 
net-maker, Haverhill, Mass. Runs away, is re- 
covered, and finally discharged, returning to 
Newburyport. 

October 13. Apprenticed to Ephraim W. 
Allen, editor and proprietor of the Newbury- 
port Herald, with whom he makes his home. 

1822, May. Begins to write, anonymously, for the 
" Herald." 

1823, September 3. Death of his mother, Fanny 
Lloyd. 

1825, December 10. End of his apprenticeship. 



CHRONOLOGY OF GARRISON 127 

1826, March 22-September 21. Editor and pub- 
lisher of the Free Press, Newburyport. 

June. Seeks out John G. Whittier, a bud- 
ding poet. 

December. To Boston in search of employ- 
ment, boarding in Scott Court. 

1827, Compositor in Boston, boarding latterly at 
30 Federal Street with the Rev. William Collier. 

1828, January 4-July 4. Editor in Boston of the 
National Philanthropist. 

March 17. First meeting, in Boston, with 
Benjamin Lundy. 

October 3. Begins editing the Journal of 
the Times at Bennington, Vt., boarding with 
Deacon Erwin SafFord on the north side of the 
Troy Road. 

December 6. Visit from Lundy to solicit his 
assistance in editing the Genius of Universal 
Emancipation in Baltimore. 

1829, March 27. Last issue, under his editorship, 
of the " Journal of the Times." 

April. Returns to Boston, boarding again at 
30 Federal Street, with J. G. Whittier as his 
room-mate. 

July 4. Delivers his first public address 
against slavery, at Park Street Church, Boston. 

August. Sails for Baltimore, to join Lundy, 
boarding with the Misses Harris at 135 Market 
Street. 



128 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON 

1829, September 2. First issue of the Genius with 
his collaboration. First announcement " that 
the slaves are entitled to immediate and com- 
plete emancipation." 

1830, March i. Garrison's trial for libel of Francis 
Todd of Newburyport. 

April 17. Committed to Baltimore jail in 
default of payment of fine. 

June 5. Released hy the liberality of Arthur 
Tappan. Returns to Boston and 30 Federal 
Street. 

August. Publishes " Proposals for publish- 
ing a Weekly Periodical in Washington City, 
to be entitled the PubUc Liberator and Jour- 
nal of the Times." 

October 1 5, 1 6, 1 8. Delivers three anti-slav- 
ery addresses in Julien Hall, corner of Milk 
and Congress Streets, Boston, and wins the 
support of Samuel J. May and Samuel E. Sewall. 

183 1, January i. First issue of the Liberator, from 
Merchants' Hall, northeast comer of Con- 
gress and Water Streets, by Garrison in part- 
nership with Isaac Knapp. " Our Country is 
the World, Our Countrymen are Mankind." 

November 13. First meeting to found the 
New England Anti-Slavery Society. 

— Interview with Aaron Burr in Boston, at 
Burr*s request. 

1832, January 6. The New England Anti-Slavery 
Society formed. 



CHRONOLOGY OF GARRISON 129 

1832, June 2. Publication of the Thoughts on 
African Colonization. 

1833, January. Consulted by Miss Prudence Cran- 
dall as to a colored girls' school in Canterbury, 
Conn. 

April 5. First meeting with Helen Eliza 
Benson, in Providence, R. I. 

May 2. Sails for England on behalf of a 
Manual Labor School for colored youth, leav- 
ing Oliver Johnson in charge of the "Liberator.'* 

May 22. Arrives at Liverpool. 

June. Meets Zachary Macaulay and Thomas 
Fowell Buxton in London. 

June 19. With George Thompson, visits 
William Wilberforce at Bath. 

July 13. Exeter Hall meeting, addressed by 
Garrison and Daniel O'Connell. 

July 13. Interview with Thomas Clarkson 
at Ipswich. 

August 5. Attends Wilberforce's funeral in 
Westminster Abbey. 

August 18. Sails from London. 

September 29. Lands in New York. 

October 2. Witnesses mobbing of New York 
City Anti-Slavery Society, partly aimed at him. 

October 7. Threatened with mob in Boston. 

October 27. Indicted for libel in Brooklyn, 
Conn., in connection with the persecution of 
Prudence Crandall. 



130 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON 

1833, December 4. Drafts the Declaration of 
Sentiments at the founding in Philadelphia 
of the American Anti-Slavery Society. 

1834, September 4. Marriage with Helen Eliza 
Benson. 

September 30. George Thompson of Eng- 
land lands in New York. 

1835, July 29. Garrison burned in effigy at Charles- 
ton, S. C. 

September 10. Gallows erected before his 
house at 23 Brighton Street, Boston. 

October 21. Meeting of the Boston Female 
Anti-Slavery Society mobbed. Garrison seized 
by mob, rescued and committed to Leverett 
Street jail. 

October 23. Seeks refuge in Brooklyn, Conn. 

November 4. Returns to Boston for a fort- 
night. 

November 18. Leaves Boston for Brooklyn. 
Francis Jackson opens his house to the Boston 
Female Anti-Slavery Society for their postponed 
meeting. 

December 30. Garrison meets Harriet Mar- 
tineau in Boston. 

December 31. Dissolves partnership with 
Knapp. 

1836, February 13. Birth of George Thompson 
Garrison at Brooklyn, Conn. 

September. Garrison boards with Miss Par- 
ker at 5 Hayward Place, Boston. 



CHRONOLOGY OF GARRISON 131 

1837, June. Visits John Quincy Adams. 
August 2. Attacked by the Clerical Appeal. 
November. Wins invaluable supporters in 

Elizabeth Pease of England, Wendell Phillips, 
and Edmund Quincy. 

1838, January 21. Birth of William Lloyd Garri- 
son, Jr., in Boston. 

May 16. Garrison at the mobbing and de- 
struction of Pennsylvania Hall, Philadelphia. 

September 18. Drafts the Constitution and 
Declaration of Sentiments for the Non-Resis- 
tance Society, Boston. 

September. Resides at 2 Nassau Court (after- 
wards Seaver Place), Boston. 

1839, October. Removes his home to Cambridge- 
port, Mass., northwest corner of Elm Street 
and Broadway. 

1 840, May. Schism in the anti-slavery ranks over 
woman's tights and political action. 

May '22. Garrison sails from New York to 
attend the World's Anti-Slavery Convention 
in London. 

June 4. Birth of Wendell Phillips Garrison 
in Cambridgeport. 

June 16. Garrison arrives in Liverpool. 

June 18. Refuses to enter World's Anti- 
Slavery Convention because his women co- 
delegates are excluded. 

August 4. Sails from Liverpool. 



132 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON 

1840, August 17. Lands at Boston., 
September 24. Attends the Chardon Street 

Convention, Boston. 

1 84 1, After the midyear, removes to northwest 
corner of Magazine and William Streets, Cam- 
bridgeport. 

August. White Mountain tour with N. P. 
Rogers. 

1842, February. First intimation of disunion policy. 
September 9. Charles Follen Garrison born 

in Cambridgeport. 

October 14. Death of Garrison's brother 
James. 

1843, January 27. Garrison declares the pro-slav- 
ery compact of the Constitution " a covenant 
with death and an agreement with hell." 

In the autumn, makes his home at 13 Pine 
Street, Boston. 

1844, May 7-9. The American Anti-Slavery Soci- 
ety adopts Garrison's policy of "No Union 
with Slaveholders." 

December 16. Helen Frances Garrison born 
in Boston. 

1845, January 29. Garrison a delegate to the Anti- 
Texas Convention in Faneuil Hall, Boston. 

1846, July 16. Sails for England on invitation of 
the Glasgow Emancipation Society. 

August. Meets Joseph Mazzini and Ferdi- 
nand Freiligrath in London. 



CHRONOLOGY OF GARRISON 133 

August 4. Attends the World's Temperance 
Convention in London. 

August 10. Helps form in London the Anti- 
Slavery League. 

August 20. Last visit to Thomas Clarkson. 

November 4. Sails from Liverpool. 

November 17. Lands in Boston. 

December 11. Birth of Elizabeth Pease 
Garrison in Boston. 

1847, August, September. Garrison's first Western 
tour. 

September, October. Prostrated with fever 
in Cleveland, O. 

1848, January 21. Calls Anti-Sabbath Convention 
in Boston. 

March 23, 24. Convention meets. 
April 20. Death of Elizabeth Pease Garrison. 
October 29. Birth of Francis Jackson Gar- 
rison in Boston. 

1849, March. Garrison removes from Pine Street 
to 65 Suffolk Street (afterwards Shawmut Ave- 
nue.) 

April 8. Death of Charles Follen Garrison. 
July 27. Garrison presents address to Father 
Mathew in Boston. 

1850, May 7. At the mobbing of the American 
Anti-Slavery Society's anniversary meeting by 
Isaiah Rynders and his gang, in the Broadway 
Tabernacle, New York. 



134 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON 

1850, October 23. Attends Woman's Rights Con- 
vention in Worcester, Mass. 

October 29. George Thompson lands in 
Boston. 

November 15. Garrison at Thompson re- 
ception and mobbing in Faneuil Hall. 

1852, February. Letter to Louis Kossuth. 
— Removes to Concord Street, Boston. 

1853, April. Removes to 14 Dix Place, Boston. 
June. Mobbed at Bible Convention, Hart- 
ford, Conn. 

October 6. Second Western tour. Attends 
National Woman's Rights Convention at Cleve- 
land, O. 

December, Visits Mrs. Stowe at Andover, 
Mass. 

1854, July 4. Burns the pro-slavery Constitution 
in public at Framingham, Mass. 

1857, January. Meets John Brown at Theodore 
Parker's house. 

January 15. At Worcester Disunion Con- 
vention. 

July. Joins in call for Cleveland Disunion 
Convention. 
1863, January i. Celebrates Lincoln's Emancipa- 
tion Proclamation. 

December 3, 4. At celebration in Philadel- 
phia of the 30th anniversary of the formation 
of the American Anti-Slavery Society. 



CHRONOLOGY OF GARRISON 135 

1864, February 6. George Thompson lands in Bos- 
ton on his third visit to the United States. 

June 9. Garrison's interview with President 
Lincoln at the White House. 

August. Removes to 125 Highland Street, 
Roxbury, Mass. 

1865, February4. Celebrates the Constitutional 
amendment abolishing slavery. 

April 14. With George Thompson at the 
raising of the flag over Fort Simiter. (Presi- 
dent Lincoln assassinated.) 

April 15. Visits Calhoun's grave in Charles- 
ton. Receives great ovation from the freedmen. 
Visits camp of his son's colored regiment. 
(Lincoln dies.) 

May 10. Resigns the Presidency of the 
American Anti-Slavery Society in New York. 

December 29. Issues the last number of 
the Liberator. 

1866, January 25. Withdraws from the Massa- 
chusetts Anti-Slavery Society. 

1867, May 8. Sails for England with George 
Thompson. 

June. Meets Nicholas TourguenefF, Edward 
Laboulaye, and Augustin Cochin in Paris. 

June 6. Witnesses Napoleon's military re- 
view before Alexander of Russia, William of 
Prussia, and Bismarck, in the Bois de Boulogne. 

June 19. Meets John Bright in London. 



136 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON 

1867, June 29. London breakfast in Garrison's 
honor. Speeches by John Bright, the Duke of 
Argyll, Earl Russell, John Stuart Mill, and 
George Thompson. 

July 18. Presented with the freedom of the 
city of Edinburgh. 

August 3. Last meeting with Mazzini. 

August 26, 27. As delegate from the Ameri- 
can Freedman's Union, attends the Interna- 
tional Anti-Slavery Conference in Paris. 

September. Swiss tour with Richard D. Webb. 

October 26. Sails from Liverpool for America. 

November 6. Lands in Boston. 

1868, March 10. Presented with a national testi- 
monial of $31,000. 

1875, December 10. Celebrates his 70th birthday 
by setting type in the Newburyport " Herald " 
office. 

1876, January 25. Death of Mrs. Garrison. 

1877, May 23. Sails for England for his fifth and 
final visit. 

June 3. Lands in Liverpool. 

June 26. Breakfasted by the British and 
Foreign Anti-Slavery Society in London. 

July 15. Last meeting with George Thomp- 
son. 

August 10. Last meeting with Elizabeth 
Pease Nichol. 

August 25. Sails from Liverpool. 



CHRONOLOGY OF GARRISON 137 

September 4. Lands in New York. 

1878, October 13. Celebrates the 60th anniversary 
of his apprenticeship by setting type in the 
Newburyport " Herald " office. 

October 14. Dinner in his honor given by 
the Nev^ England Franklin Club (of Master- 
printers), Boston. 

1879, February. Opposes the Chinese Exclusion 
policy. 

May 24. Dies in New York at his daughter's 
apartments in the Westmoreland, southeast cor- 
ner of 17th Street and Fourth Avenue. 

May 28. Interment at Forest Hills Cemetery, 
Boston. 



(ftht 0itoer8iDe ^it0 

Electrotyped and printed by H. O. Houghton 6^ Co. 
Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A. 



AUG 29 



